A Writing Blog.

WARNINGS: PG13 mentions of sex, nothing very graphic.

A/N: I'm also not into Christmas, so I was not going to do anything. But a very sweet request changed my mind. Hope everyone has a pleasant Christmas xxxx

Nutmeg Christmas Headcanon

Noah is the one to roll his eyes when the Christmas decorations start filling all the shops.  He notices, but will never stop to look at wrapping paper or touch the tinsel.  Like in his mind this holiday was not one that he was meant to be a part of. 

You have tried to ask a little bit about it, but Noah doesn’t seem to have a major reason.  It’s just a fuss about something he doesn’t care for.  ‘There’s too much pressure on Christmas.  It’s supposed to be magical and full of wonder, and yet, it’s always a disappointment despite all the effort.  I cringe when I think of how you can feel the let-down of it radiate from everyone.  I really think it’s just better to let is pass.’

He had a point.  You feel the same.  Christmas for you was high expectations, your mom trying really hard to make sure there is something special, but your dad couldn’t be bothered to get up from his seat and join the rest of the family at the tree where everyone was exchanging gifts.  Year after year.  But somehow, you wanted to try a new tradition.  You wanted to start a new way of doing things, leaving all the memories in the past.

He was resistant, but not negative.

On the third Christmas you spent together, you had the odd Christmas dinner you were invited to by Noah’s friends and your sibling.  All of which you attended, bringing a gift, smiling and putting on the paper Christmas hat.

But for your new Christmas traditions, you included Noah in the whole process.  You researched the Pagan reasons for the Yule celebrations and decided to embrace that side instead.

You prepared food together, Noah deciding he wanted roasted beef, which he took charge of, looking for recipes on Pinterest as neither of you have ever done something this serious before.  You prepared other favourites.  You kept telling him that it was a warming winter meal, you might as well.  But after a morning in the kitchen together, listening to music and stealing kisses, spirits were high.

Afterwards you took him outside where you broke a branch off one of the few trees on the property.  ‘It’s supposed to be evergreen, but this is fine,’ you explained.  He carried it inside and you planted it in a large vase with some rocks at the bottom to keep it from falling over.  Then you simply strung some battery lights into it. 

‘Something else we can add?’ he asks, giving you a small smile. 

‘No, I didn’t want to overdo it,’ you said a little bashfully. 

He steps forwards and takes both your hands.  ‘I like this,’ he says and his eyes drift to the little branch and then back to your eyes.  ‘It’s simpler.’

You look down.  ‘I want it to be special, but I don’t want to fall into the same pitfalls.’

‘You haven’t,’ he insists.

‘You feel like you need to reassure me,’ you say and then look up at him.

He keeps eye contact with you for a moment.  ‘Alright so let me add some things to this, yeah?  I don’t want it to be all on you.’

You smile hopefully.  ‘Okay, like what?’

He leaves you and goes to the kitchen.  ‘Let me get this straight, the meal is for what again?’

‘To ask for abundance in the new year,’ you say, following behind him.

‘The decorated branch is to remember that life will carry on after the winter or the dark times,’ he says.  ‘I like that part.’

‘Yeah,’ you nod along with him. 

‘So, every year I will make my famous hot chocolate,’ he says, starting to take stuff from the cupboards. 

‘That’s a good idea,’ you say, smiling softly as you watch him take mugs out and start putting things inside. 

‘Did you buy me a gift?’ he asks, looking at you sideways.

‘Yes,’ you answer.  ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.’

‘We promised we wouldn’t,’ he scolds you playfully. 

‘I said I’m sorry,’ you play along.

He forgets the mugs and crowds you back against the kitchen counter, his hands resting against the edges on either side of your hips.  He comes closer and breathes in your neck and goosebumps run down your spine.  ‘No mistletoe?’ he asks.

‘I will get us some,’ you whisper.

He kisses you, starting from your jaw and working his way towards your lips slowly and teasingly.  He kisses you and in the kiss, he says thank you for trying.  He breaks away and says, ‘I think we should eat first and then the hot chocolate can be part of the dessert.’

‘We didn’t plan any other dessert,’ you say.

‘Oh, Peach,’ he smiles.  ‘You know what I meant.’

‘Oh,’ you blush then you nod your agreeance. 

‘I’d also like to suggest a movie for our new tradition.  No Christmas movies though,’ he says suddenly so serious. 

‘Sure, which one did you have in mind?’ you ask.

‘My whole body wants to say Lord of the Rings, but no, I thought maybe any old movie we haven’t seen in years.  For some nostalgia.  We can take turns or we can watch two movies.’

You reach up on your toes and kiss his lips.  ‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll dish up for us, you go get a movie ready, you choose,’ he says sweetly.

After watching Practical Magic and enjoying a lovely meal, Noah brings a big mug of hot chocolate to you.  ‘It’s going to be quite rich, I think.  Take it slow,’ he winks.

It was.  Delicious and rich and comforting, especially when you were sitting in Noah’s arms and you were watching as the blinking lights shone on his beautiful face as he explained how much cream is in his beverage. 

You hand him a small wrapped gift when you have emptied the mug.  He opens it shyly like he doesn’t know what to say or do.  He frowns for a moment, before he sees the full small canvas.  You can see the thoughts whirr behind his eyes. 

‘It’s us,’ you say also feeling worried he might not like it. 

‘As skeletons?’ he asks, looking at you for confirmation. 

‘Mmm,’ you nod.  ‘I wanted to paint a picture that represents forever.  And that it what my brain came up with.’

He looks at it a moment longer before he says, his voice very low, ‘I love it.’  He seems the slightest bit emotional.  ‘I love your brain.’

‘I love you,’ you say softly. 

‘I got you something too,’ he says. 

You tilt your head sideways.

‘I know I gave you shit, but you know I was just joking,’ he defends himself.

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘So, before I give it to you, as always, I need to explain,’ he says calmly and he turns to you a little.    ‘It’s a ring.  And it means forever for me, too.  I know we have spoken about our future before and that we don’t really see the point in getting married or anything like that.  But I guess, I just wanted a new symbol.’

You don’t know what to say, so you wait for him to continue.

‘I know it’s stupid, but it felt right,’ he says frowning at you.  ‘You can tell me if it’s something you wouldn’t be into, I’d understand.’

‘Can I see it?’ you ask.

He takes the small box from his pocket and opens it for you to look.   Black stone, set in a silver metal with carvings of a crescent moon on either side.  Unique and unconventional. 

‘It’s beautiful, Noah,’ you say.  ‘I love it.’

‘Really?’ he asks, his eyebrows high.

‘Really,’ you reassure. 

‘It made me think of you as soon as I saw it,’ he says as he takes the ring out of the box.  ‘It’s also made with non-traditional materials.  Onyx stone and it’s set in silver.  It wasn’t an expensive ring.’

‘Good,’ you say immediately. 

‘Yeah?’ he asks.  ‘I remember you went off about how diamonds are a crazy thing to spend money on, and it stuck with me.  But mostly, this just spoke to me.  I knew it was yours.’

‘Please put it on,’ you hold out your hand.  You let out a breath when it settles in place.  ‘Wow.’

You both admire it for a moment, then he turns your finger so the lights can reflect from it.  ‘Peach?’ he asks and then looks you in the eye.  ‘Forever?’

‘Forever, baby,’ you answer. 

He led you to the bedroom not long after that, holding your hand and the painting you made him.  He was sweet and gentle when he thrust into you, there was a lot of kissing and shared breaths and whispered ‘I love you’s.  He took his time and it built slowly.  He was wrapped around you, playing with the ring on your finger.  ‘Only improvement on this for next year is the mistletoe, just so I have more excuses to kiss you.’

‘You don’t need an excuse,’ you laugh softly. 

‘Thank you for this,’ he says, nuzzling into you the way he always does just before he was about to fall asleep.  ‘I am on board for the new Noah-and-Peach traditions.  New, happy memories for this time of year.’

‘And it’s just ours,’ you add.

‘Deal,’ he exhales.   

Looking around the table, everyone is either still halfway through their food and talking, or, like him, already finished. Before he says anything, he scrapes his chair against the tile floor, the deafening sound drawing every pair of eyes to him.

“Bathroom,” he murmurs as his excuse, but before he can get away, Nicholas reaches out and offers him a shot glass.

“Before you do, you’ve gotta have one of these.”

Noah raises his own on the other side of him, and he lets out a sigh, already dreading what he’s missing from your stream. He tosses back the shot quickly, making a face as it burns down his throat, then stands and gestures toward the bathroom.

Once inside, he slips into a stall, immediately pulling up your livestream. He leans back against the wall as it loads. He’s missed the first few minutes—traditionally when you tease the chat, before moving into the slow process of teasing yourself.

If any of them know about your side venture, they’ve never mentioned it, but Bryan knows, and Bryan has never missed a single livestream—always having your notifications on, subscribing to the highest possible tier. Whether you know it’s him or not, he isn’t sure. He hopes you don’t. There’s something extra taboo and forbidden about the idea of him watching when he knows he shouldn’t be—of you being completely unaware that he’s one of the many viewers.

In frame, you’re spreading your thighs, teasing the fabric barely covering you, a toy peeking out, no doubt one of the app controlled ones he’s seen you use before.

“I already feel so needy for you,” you purr, your voice shooting straight to his cock. It twitches and he reaches down with his free, large hand, slowly palming himself as he listens to the soft sounds you make. Without the chat visible, it’s easy to imagine the whole show is for him, especially when you start whispering filth while you toy with yourself, switching between fucking yourself on various toys or grinding a vibrator against your clit. You’re shameless, revelling in all of it, the outpouring of attention and horny comments.

“Mmm, thank you for the big tip. Let me slip another finger in for that.”

Bryan’s breathing grows heavy as he watches you dip another finger inside to join the vibrating toy already filling you. The sounds you make keep his cock throbbing and twitching until he can’t resist, he pulls down the zipper of his jeans, freeing his cock and wrapping his large hand around it, pumping slowly as he spreads the precum already leaking from the tip, along his shaft.

“Let me just bring the camera a little closer.”

You reach forward, adjusting the angle, and the new view makes him moan audibly, causing him to bite down on his lower lip to silence himself.

“Only a couple more donations until we reach our next goal, then I’ll try this big toy right here—gifted by one of you wonderful viewers.”

When you hold up the toy, Bryan’s cock throbs, heart racing slightly as you show off his gift. The prospect of watching you use it has him quickly tapping his screen to donate, pushing you to the goal.

“Oh, looks like we'be already made it. You really wanna watch me fuck this big dildo, don’t you?” you moan.

He just nods at his phone, mumbling, “Fuck yeah, I do…”

Eyes glued to the screen, he watches you lather up the toy, then slip the vibrating app controlled one out of your soaked pussy and set it aside on the towel beneath you.

You bring the tip of the dildo to your slit. “Oh, it’s so big. I don’t know if it’ll fit…” you tease, moaning.

He squeezes his hand around his cock, an aching throb rolling through him. “Yeah, you can. You can do it for me, baby,” he murmurs, as if you could hear him, and when you start to slide it in, he practically holds his breath, watching your pussy stretch before it bottoms out.

“Oh, fuck, there! It fits!” You moan, and the second you start fucking yourself on it, his hand matches your pace.

“There you are. Look at that—look at how deep I can get this toy all the way in me.”

You shuffle closer, showing off to the camera, pulling the dildo almost all the way out before pushing it back in, the angle even showing a bulge in your stomach with how deep it reaches.

“Fuckfuckfuck…” Bryan chants under his breath, fisting his cock harder the more you show off, until a sudden sound makes him jolt.

“Holy shit, is that—” Noah’s voice cuts as he says your name, the sound of which makes Bryan cringe—both internally and externally, realising he’s been caught with his dick out, your livestream full screen, you riding the toy he personally gifted you. The same toy he bought imagining how it would look if he were fucking you.

“What the fuck, Noah?”

“What the fuck? Dude, I’m not the one in here jerking off to— is that really—”

“No, but you’re looking over the stalls like a fucking creep.”

“Maybe if you didn’t moan so loud,” Noah scoffs.

Bryan’s face goes hot as he stuffs his phone into his pocket, scrambling to tuck himself away and zip his jeans.

“Yeah, well…” he mutters, trying to brush it off while stepping out of the stall—l, only to find Nicholas standing there, practically breathless with laughter.

“You really didn’t hear us come in, huh?” Nicholas teases.

Bryan shoves past him to the sink, shaking his head as he quickly washes his hands.

“The least you could do is share.”

That makes him pause. He hadn’t considered the idea. He doesn’t exactly love the thought of sharing you with anyone, and yet…

Retrieving his phone from his pocket, he sees your livestream still going. He hesitates for just a moment, then steps toward Noah and Nicholas, holding out the device, screen facing up.

WARNINGS: Agency letter, riding, piv, fingering, orgasm denial, breeding.

Tuesday:

Noah comes over, and you know, almost instantly, that something is off. 

You made dinner and Noah is very polite and friendly during the meal, but his smiles were half-hearted, he seemed distracted and a little distant.  There were small moments when true emotions came through, like when you said that you had a rough day, you saw his true concern. 

He was also quiet, not really offering any information and adding very little to the conversations, but you noticed that he was trying – he just really was not feeling it. 

You stand in the middle of the kitchen for a really long time staring at the door after he left.  You play the evening over and over in your mind.  You think about how even the texts have been stunted for the last few days. 

You think back even further and remember that he was gone by the time you woke up on Sunday morning after a really intense session the whole of Saturday.  You were looking forward to the comfort of waking up next to his sleeping form, and you felt so disappointed when you realised he had gone.  But it’s only now that you are sure that something was wrong. 

You have a panic attack right there in the kitchen, leaning on the counters while you couldn’t inhale, your chest so constricted that it felt impossible.  After hours of crying and a lot of overthinking you couldn’t sleep.  The gnawing pit in your stomach remaining uneasy and constantly on your mind.

But you didn’t let him know.  You didn’t ask.

Thursday:

The email comes through while you were at work and you didn’t read it right away.  You almost forgot about it.  Until later that afternoon when you were at home and checking other messages.

Even then you didn’t think it was serious, you were expecting just a usual communication, but as it dawned on you what it is you are reading, you feel a heat spread through your body.  You read it several times, almost sure you were mistaken, but every time your eyes see the words it cut a little deeper into your heart that was beating like it wanted to climb out of your mouth.

The very short and simple email confirmed that Mr Davis has cancelled the arrangement that he had with you and the agency and that it was in effect immediately.  Thank you for your time with the agency.  Please make use of our services in the future. 

Your mind feels completely empty, unable to process the information.  At the same time, it feels like your mind is screaming at the top of its lungs with the number of thoughts crashing through it. 

You work your way through another panic attack, breathing just like he fucking showed you and you were not sure if it made it worse – thinking about him, when he was the cause of your anguish and pain and anger.  How could he do this?

When you could breathe normally again you started to think about what you could do.  Your options all seeming terrible.  A really big part of you wanted to block him and never ask him why, the part of you that was proud and wanted to protect yourself.  But there was a bigger part that kept telling you that Noah would not do this.

You think about calling him.  But having this conversation over the phone was not something you wanted to do.

You laid in bed and could not sleep, could not stop thinking and worrying and wondering why this is happening. 

The thought barely popped into your head before you jumped into action, throwing the blankets back and putting on just enough clothes that you could leave the house without freezing.  You got in the car and started the drive to his house convinced that this was a great idea.  The closer you get, though, your confidence starts to buckle, but you keep going.  You feel fear like you haven’t felt in months grip you and yet you keep driving.  Tears start for the first time since reading that fucking email and you wipe at them just enough that you could see where you were going as you keep moving forward. 

When you park in the driveway, you opened the door and got out.  It was dark, the lights in the house were off and it was quiet.  Now what?

You send him a text.  I am outside. 

He doesn’t read it.  He is probably sleeping. 

You look in the direction of where his bedroom window should be and you start calling him.  He answers a lot quicker than you expected.  ‘Hey,’ he says his voice sleepy.

It took you a moment to think of something to say.  ‘Can you come speak to me?  I am outside.’

‘What?’ he says, clearly more woken up by the shock. 

You see his bedroom light go on.  ‘I know it’s late, but it couldn’t wait.’

‘Are you alright?’ he asks, sounding very worried.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m coming, just hang on,’ he says and then he hangs up.

Less than a minute later, you see the light go on and hear the key in the lock.  He opens the door and he stands there slightly hunched over, his hair a mess, his face slightly sleep-swollen, but his eyes were alert. 

‘What’s going on?  What happened?’ he asks.

‘I got an email, Noah.  From the agency,’ you say, trying to keep the anger out of your voice. 

‘An email?’ he says frowning.

You do not reply, instead you wait.

‘Can you come in?  It’s cold.  Let’s talk inside,’ he says stepping back to make space for you.

You think about it for a few seconds, literally shaking from the cold, but also fear and anger.  ‘I can’t, Noah.  You need to tell me now.’

‘Tell you what?’ he asks.

When you try to think of how to respond, the feelings that have been overwhelming you just became too much.  You start crying again, hiccupping into it, and hide your face in your hands.  You try to compose yourself so that you could actually have a conversation.  When you finally look up and away from your hands, Noah is standing in front of you, looking so worried and confused and conflicted that it made you desperate for this to be over.  ‘Nutmeg!’ you say louder than it needed to be.

Noah has a visceral reaction to that.  He steps forward like he wants to comfort you, and you take a step backward, away from him. 

‘Nutmeg means everything stops,’ you say through the tears, your voice thick. 

‘It does,’ he agrees. 

‘So just get it over with, Noah,’ you say. 

‘Tell me what the email said?  Please,’ his eyes are shiny and begging with you. 

You inhale shakily.  ‘That you cancelled our arrangement with immediate effect.’ 

‘Fuck,’ he says under his breath, but it’s said with anger. 

‘So, it’s true?’ you ask, your voice soft.

‘Peach, this is a misunderstanding, alright?  Come inside, please, baby?  I can explain everything,’ he says, reaching his hand out for you to take.

You wanted to take his hand so much, but not if he was going to rip you apart right after.  You wipe at the tears that were falling down your face at an alarming rate. 

‘Please trust me?  I will let you out as soon as you want to leave.  You know I will never make you do anything you don’t want to do,’ he says, his face serious, his eyes communicating so many emotions to you. 

‘Okay,’ you say cautiously giving in.  You step past him into the house and take the lead to his room, while he locks the door.  The house is dark, except for the light from his bedroom, and the house is warm and you feel a tiny amount of tension leave your muscles. 

He finally comes in and closes the door behind him.  ‘Do you want to sit?’

‘No, thanks,’ you say.

He walks to his desk and takes an envelope into his hands and he fiddles with it nervously.  ‘I was going to give this to you tomorrow night,’ he says.  ‘I was supposed to be the one to tell you, I asked them not to email you.’

‘Is that the cancellation?’ you ask.

He nods apologetically. 

‘Why?’ you ask, unable to stop your bottom lip from shaking.  ‘What did I do wrong?’

‘No,’ he shakes his head and steps closer to you again.  ‘You did nothing wrong, please don’t think that.’  He doesn’t come any closer, he pauses.  ‘I was still figuring out how I was going to do this.’

‘Please.  Can you please just say it?’ you whisper, finding it more difficult to hold yourself together the longer you stood in front of him. 

‘Yes.  I’m going to try my best,’ you see him wring his hands.  ‘I don’t want to be your agency-appointed dom anymore.  I can’t be.’

He had clearly not finished yet, but you interrupt.  ‘Why?’

He takes a deep breath, his chest expanding and he lifts his eyes nervously to meet yours.  ‘Because I love you.’

For a few seconds there is no oxygen in your lungs.  ‘What?’

‘I can’t keep pretending at our meetings.  Do you know how often I have to bite my tongue?  Every time we are together, Peach,’ emotion is thick in his voice and his expression on his face is so open and vulnerable.

You process without a word.

‘I was going to do something more coherent tomorrow, maybe have a better plan,’ he runs his fingers through his hair. 

You were still thinking of what to say, and then he slowly took a few steps closer to you, gauging your reaction at his movements. 

‘I’m sorry if that’s not what you wanted to hear.  I’m sorry it came out like this,’ he says closer to you now, almost touching.

‘Really?’ is all you manage.

He nods again.

‘Oh.’  You were looking down, not making eye contact. 

He lets out a small sigh.  ‘I have for a long time,’ he says softly.  ‘I was worried it was just because we have a really good intimate connection.  But I would fantasise about holding your hand or the way your hair smells when we sleep.  I have wanted to tell you so many times.’

He was close enough to you that you didn’t have to reach far at all to touch his hand, and then your fingers twined together like they have many times before, so naturally.  ‘Why didn’t you?’

He swallows.  ‘I was scared.  I am scared.  I know that if you don’t feel the same way, this comes to an end, but I can’t hide it anymore.’

The tears welling up in your eyes now are different.  The feeling bursting in your chest is different.  ‘Noah?’ you whisper.

‘Baby?’ he says, also whispering, while his eyes look right into yours.  The love pouring from the look he gives you, the raw feelings evident in the brown – it feels like a physical force hitting you.

You cup his cheek with your free hand.  Right when the words were about to come out of your mouth, the reality of what you were about to say makes you choke on a sob.  ‘Of course I feel the same.’

He smiles tearily.  ‘You do?’  He steps even closer.

‘I love you, so much,’ you cry.

He wraps you up in a hug, and bends down far enough to bury his face in your neck.  You feel his body and his heat and how he shakes.  You are overwhelmed by the relief. 

‘I thought you were going to break my heart tonight,’ you admit quietly in his ear.

He squeezes you a little tighter.  ‘I was so scared to tell you.’  You feel his words in your body.  ‘I was terrified this would end.’

You rub your hand up and down his back, while you think.  ‘I don’t even know when it happened.  Loving you.  But it feels like it has been so long.’

He drops a kiss on your neck.  ‘I was in denial, but when I realised that I craved being with you all the time, I knew.’  He pulls back from the hug but stays close.  ‘The letter from the agency was supposed to be a romantic gesture.’

You grimace a little.  ‘It nearly killed me.’

‘I’m sorry, this would have been simpler if I just said something like a normal person,’ he grimaces back.  ‘Stay the night?’

You nod and Noah’s hands come up to cup your face, he asks permission with his eyes before he leans in slowly and presses his lips against yours and he sighs in relief as soon as he does.  The kiss feels different.  He kisses you like it’s the first time again.  The parting of lips, the first touch of his tongue, sending shivers through your body.  He pulls you backwards with him, while he carefully shuffles his way towards the bed.  When the back of his legs hit the mattrass, he sits down on the edge. 

You stand between his spread legs and he rests his hands on your hips while he looks up at you with his dark eyes.  ‘I want to take my time with you,’ he pleads.

You brush back his hair with one hand.  ‘I would love that.’

He looks down briefly, before those eyes are boring into yours again.  ‘I want to be clear, baby.  Before we go further.  I want us to be together.  I want to wake up next to you every morning.’

‘I want that, too,’ you drop a firm kiss on his forehead. 

He slips his hands under your sleep shirt and touches and feels his way up your torso, then he pulls it off your body before his hands are at your breasts.  True to his promise he takes his time and explores you like he doesn’t already know every inch of you.  He spends so much time licking and kissing and pinching at your flesh and nipples.  All you can do is breathe and enjoy his attention, because it is different now. 

He makes you lay back on the bed and then spends a lot of time tasting you, no hesitation, lapping at you.  Your hand finds the top of his head.  ‘Noah,’ you exhale.

‘I got you,’ he pants and then he pushes two fingers into you tenderly.  Then he works his fingers, with such familiarity, knowing what you like, softly sucking your clit – but it felt different.  ‘Stop me before you cum, baby.  You are cumming on my cock.’

‘Please hold my hand,’ you say as your hips roll against his face.  He grips your hand, moaning against you.  You stop him before you cum, and while you catch your breath, he gives you his fingers that you suck into your mouth.  He kisses you so sweetly all the way up your body, until his tongue replaces his fingers. 

‘I want you so much,’ he breathes into your mouth. 

‘You have me, you’ve always had me,’ you answer back. 

‘Why does it feel like it’s been months since I’ve been inside you?  It feels like I missed you so much,’ he asks.

You hold his face close to you and kiss the tip of his nose.  ‘Because something was missing until now.’

He nods with small movements of his head.  ‘But I’ve loved you through so many times.’

You give a small smile, ‘But you didn’t know that I love you too.’

‘Mmm,’ he agrees.  ‘You didn’t know either.’

‘No,’ you kiss him again.  ‘But we know now.’

He runs his cock up and down the length of your pussy.  ‘We know.’  His eyes alternate between yours and where he is pushing into you.  His eyes fall closed when he has slowly worked his way all the way in.  ‘I love you,’ he whispers, lowering himself down to be close to you.  ‘I love you, so much.’

You adjust around him and soothingly hold on to him.  ‘I love you, Noah.’

‘Oh my god,’ he says.  ‘I thought this couldn’t be more perfect.’

You pull your knees up around his hips.  ‘I know.’

He thrusts with slow and sure movements.  ‘Seeing how I am covered in your wetness, it’s one of my favourite things.’

You smile softly at him.  ‘Are you okay?’ you brush back his hair so you could see his eyes again.

‘Yes,’ he says, barely audible.  ‘Maybe a little overcome.’

‘I know, baby,’ you kiss him.  ‘Me, too.’

‘You feel so fucking good,’ he groans.  ‘I’m not going to last long.’

‘That’s okay,’ you say. 

‘No,’ he disagrees.  ‘Together.  Please?  I want us to cum together.’

‘We can try,’ you say, feeling the need in his body and seeing it in his face. 

He lifts himself back up, so his hands are free and then he rubs at your clit with his thumb.  ‘Tell me what you need?’

‘Noah,’ you say almost wanting to sit up yourself.  ‘Don’t put pressure on the moment.  It’s already special, because it’s us.’

‘Yeah,’ he nods.  ‘You’re right.’

‘Come sit here,’ you pat the bed.  ‘Let me take care of it.’

He pulls out of you slowly, and you watch his cock, painfully hard, slip free from your body, dripping wet, flexing between your legs.  So beautiful.

He seems unsure as he sits down next to you. 

‘Lean back, get comfortable,’ you say sweetly. 

He does that, adjusting a pillow behind his back.

Then you sit up and straddle his hips.  He looks up at you with awe in his eyes.  You just sit lightly on the top on his thighs, then you wrap your arms around his shoulders and kiss him.  You kiss like you wanted to tell him how much you felt for him with it.  He kisses you back slowly and deliberately and you can feel the tension leave his muscles, his breathing more even.  You move forward against his body where his cock is trapped between your stomachs. 

Once you have thoroughly messed up his hair with your fingers and once you felt the wet spot on your stomach grow sticky with his precum you wrap your fingers around him and lift yourself so you could guide him back inside you.

‘Oh, baby,’ he almost sobs, letting his head fall forward against your chest.  ‘Your pussy feels amazing.’

‘Because you were made for me, Noah.  You fit so perfectly inside me,’ you pant, trying to keep your composure as he stretches you open again, filling your body and your soul with a feeling of completeness. 

You rock your hips against his, with no rush.  You feel him so deep inside where he sends waves of pleasure through your body.  Noah’s hands explore your body, touching and squeezing all parts of you he could reach, treating each part like it’s lovely and worthy of being paid attention to.       

Every now and again you hear him whisper how much he loves you, but he does it so softly, it’s like he is revelling in the fact that he could say it out loud now. 

The pleasure builds slowly and powerfully.  ‘Please, baby?  Please?’ he says looking up you.

‘What do you need?’ you ask him sweetly.

‘Please fuck me?’ he says and he means it, his eyes desperate.

You move your hips faster and harder against him and he tries his best to meet you with thrusts of his own.  Your bodies working together to give each other what it needs. 

‘You are incredible, baby.  That’s it.  Fuck me.  Fuck me,’ he encourages.  His two fingers start rubbing at your clit and you throw your head back.  ‘No, baby, you need to look at me.’

You force your head back and then rest your forehead against his and there you stay.  ‘I’m so close, Noah.’

‘Me too, baby, I am going to cum inside you,’ he says.  ‘May I?’

‘Always,’ you answer.  ‘Please, always.’

He forces his eyes to stay open long enough to look right into your soul when he says, ‘I love you so fucking much,’ and then he cums and grips onto you. 

You knew this orgasm was going to be overwhelming, but it still shocks you.  You cling to Noah as your body convulses out of your control, and you cry immediately, the emotion and closeness and Noah being too much. 

His arms are tight around your waist as you cry into his shoulder.  You whisper over and over that you love him, worried that he didn’t know.  It took you a while to notice that he was crying too.

You finally break apart after a long time, when your legs start to ache and it’s still unpleasant when he pulls out of you.  Before he could do it himself, you get up to get a cloth from the bathroom that you run under warm water and then you head back and clean him off first with gentle strokes.  Then he takes it from you and does the same.  It all felt different.

When you settle down, he rests his head on your chest and you hold on to each other.

‘So, this means that I get to fall asleep like this every night?’ he asks.

‘Yes, if that’s what you want,’ you answer.

‘It is,’ he sighs.

‘I didn’t realise how much I wanted this until this evening,’ you admit.  ‘I kept telling myself that I was silly for loving you.  But I don’t think I knew how much I needed you until I could have you.’  You say this shyly, afraid to admit it out loud.

‘I know what you mean,’ he says. 

‘I would also think about the small things with you.  Like hugs and phone calls.  I craved it more than I wanted to admit to myself,’ you carry on.

‘We could have had each other so much sooner, if we just said something,’ he mumbles.

‘Maybe.  But maybe we had to get to this point.’  You play with his hair until he falls asleep.

**

When you wake up, Noah is gone.  It must be properly morning, because the light is bright in the room.  You are not worried, though, because everything is different.

You cautiously creak the bedroom door open, unsure who might be there.  But it’s only Noah in the kitchen, in only his boxers, stirring the coffee he had just made.  ‘Morning.’

He jumps just a little at your voice.  ‘Hey,’ he beams at you.  ‘I was going to bring this to you in bed.’

You smile.  ‘I can go right back?’

‘Yes, please.  I’m right behind you,’ he says.

You arrange the pillows so both of you can sit in bed.  Noah hands you a cup and then kisses you good morning.  ‘Mmm, this is nice.’

‘It’s a new kind of coffee Jolly insisted we try,’ he says as he settles himself in.

‘I meant waking up with you.  But the coffee is also good,’ you say turning your body a little towards his. 

His eyes are almost sparkling when he looks at you.  ‘I know we’ve woken up together before.  But, today, I knew that it meant something more.’

You take a sip of the coffee.  ‘So, how is this going to work?’

‘What?’ he asks.

‘Us?  This is not very conventional,’ you say.

‘Well,’ he takes a big gulp of his coffee and then places it on the bedside table, then he opens his arms for you.  You put yours aside too and climb right into his side where he holds you close, his chin rests on top of your head.  ‘We make the rules.’

You squeeze him a little.  ‘So, let’s make some rules.’

‘This does seem familiar,’ he teases.

‘I was awake a little after you feel asleep, wondering about how things might change,’ you say softly.

‘All I want is you,’ he whispers.

‘How do you want me?’

‘Baby?’ he says in his dom voice.  ‘As long as we are together and you feel safe and loved with me, I don’t care how.’  He rubs your back a little.  ‘Tell me what is worrying you.  Then we talk about it.’

‘Are we going to carry on being each other’s dom and sub, because I really like what we have, but maybe sometimes, it can just be us,’ you start strong.

‘Yeah, that sounds perfect.  I think we both benefit for some form of our arrangement, but some more casualness might also be good for us.  I don’t want your anxiety to become worse again,’ his voice deeper than usual.

‘We can work on these things together,’ you say like you almost just realised.

‘I would love to,’ he says.

‘Where are we sleeping if you want to wake up together every morning?’ you ask.

He snorts a little.  ‘We can alternate, literally whatever you want.’

‘I think it’s too soon to officially move in together,’ you say.

‘Yeah, I guess,’ he says.  ‘But I am ready when you are.’

‘Oh my god,’ you mumble into his chest.  ‘Okay, I’ll start thinking about that.’

‘Peach?’ he says.  ‘We take it step by step.  As long as I can hold your hand with each step, I am happy.’

You process for a moment.  ‘I love you.  You understand me so well.  You have from the moment we met.’

‘We understand each other,’ he politely corrects you. 

‘Okay, so no more worrying,’ you say sitting up and reaching for your coffee again.  ‘What are we having for breakfast?’

‘Whatever you want,’ he says.

‘Don’t make a joke about eating me for breakfast, I am really hungry,’ you say seriously.

He looks defeated.  ‘Fine, can I have you after breakfast?’

Excitement ripples through you.  Not only at what this day has in store for you, but what your future could be with him.  This beautiful soul, who has been what you needed and wanted from the start.  

‘Drink up, we are going out for breakfast and coming right back here for the rest of the day.’

**

You wake in the middle of the night and the room is dark.  Your dream woke you, but you could already feel the details of it slipping away.  Noah has a protective arm draped across your middle and he breathes in even puffs next to you.  You can see his dark hair contrast against the pillow.  You notice how his tall frame struggles to find a position where his whole body fits on the bed, his feet dangling over the edge.  You touch his hand and instinctively, in his sleep, he holds your hand and a few seconds later he uses his arm to pull you closer to him.

You lay there in utter disbelief, tears brimming in your eyes as you think.  When the emotion becomes too much and you start crying, Noah clings to you even more.

‘What’s wrong?’ he says sleepily.

‘Nothing,’ you answer honestly.

He lifts his head to look at you, but he couldn’t really see you in the dark.  ‘Why are you crying, baby?’

You try to keep your voice even when you say, ‘I think it all just hit me.’

‘What hit you?’ he asks, clearly confused.

‘I’ll tell you in the morning.  It’s okay.  You can sleep,’ you try.

‘No,’ he lifts himself up on his elbows.  ‘Tell me now.’

You roll onto your side to face him.  ‘You are the person who has made me feel the safest in my whole life.  I’ve never been a priority for someone like I’ve been for you.’

 He is quiet for a moment.  ‘Keep going.’

‘I didn’t think I would ever feel like this,’ you say after a moment.

‘Like what?’ he asks sounding sad.

‘Wanted?  Important?  I can’t really pin point it,’ you say.

He sits up all the way, then he takes your hand again and kisses your knuckles.  ‘You know, there’s a part of me that strongly believes that I am unlovable.’

‘What?  No,’ you say scooting closer, overcome with a need to make him not believe that. 

‘Hey, listen,’ he says sweetly.  ‘I am convinced the reason we work, we fit… is because we give each other the very things we don’t think we deserve.  So, from my side, I want you, and I cherish you and you are my first priority.  I want you to be happy and comfortable more than anything.  I love you.’

You process for a little while.  ‘Okay, in that case.’  You grab a hold of his face with both hands.  ‘You are the easiest person to love.  Nothing has been more effortless, you are the best human I know.  I can’t think of someone who deserves to be loved more thoroughly than you.’

He smiles sweetly, you feel his cheeks under your hands.  ‘Thank you,’ he whispers. 

‘I am going to make you believe it, I promise.’

‘Closest I have ever come to believing it has been with you.’

[END]

XX

A/N: A million thank yous to YOU!  For giving this story a chance, for reading, interacting with it – I neeeever expected the response I got from you lovely people.  I have criiied reading messages and comments and I cannot explain how it has healed a part of me I didn’t know was broken. 

I have ideas for more stories, but I will be taking a break before I try that.  (I also have a crazy idea to rewrite The Apparition idk) I might add something here and there to Nutmeg, because I feel so sad leaving Noah and Peach. 

You guys will never know what you have done for my soul.  I LOVE YOU ALL.

WARNINGS: Noah POV, cuddlefuck, orgasm denial, deepthroat, throat fucking, breast play, cunnilingus, fingering, thigh riding, PIV, edging, breeding, many orgasms, (let me know if I need to add something.)

Tuesday:

She came over to my place on Tuesday evening, I cooked pasta.  She seemed to have enjoyed it, even asking for more.

The plan was to carry on with the show we started watching together and it all was going according to plan.  The TV was on, blankets in place and lights turned low.  She cuddled into me and I held onto her and it felt like I was breathing easy for the first time since Saturday morning.  Both us were quite tired and fell asleep within minutes of the show starting.  The show kept playing and later when I woke up, I didn’t even care that we missed it, because it was so good to just have her there with me.

I suggested a longer session for the weekend when she was about to go home, already knowing that I was going to count the minutes until we were together.  She agreed.

Friday:

I have to knock when I arrive on Friday evening.  She opens the door hesitantly and then frowns deeply when she sees that it’s me, but then opens the door all the way.  She has a robe on over what I know is just panties and I grab her and collapse into her as much as I can without knocking her over.  ‘Finally.’

She takes a few steps to get her balance, but her hands are on my back immediately.  ‘Are you okay?’ she asks.

‘Mmm,’ I mumble.  ‘I think I left my key at home.  I’m sorry.’

‘That’s okay,’ she says.  ‘Did you have a rough day?’

‘Yeah,’ I sigh.  ‘One of those where it just feels like life is testing you.’

‘Oh no, what happened?’ she asks sounding really concerned.

‘I dropped my phone, screen is fucked.  I stubbed my toe.  Got a parking ticket,’ I list off and then feel a new wave of self-pity.

‘I’m sorry, that is a lot,’ she says and she starts stroking my back. 

‘I’m glad I’m here now, I was looking forward to this all day,’ I tell her.

‘Oh, baby,’ she says sympathetically.  ‘I’m glad you’re here, too.  Have you eaten anything?’

‘No,’ I pull back from the hug.  ‘Maybe I should go get us something?’

‘I can make us some toast?’ she offers. 

‘I’d love some toast,’ I say honestly and lean back enough to kiss her. 

I stay close to her while he puts the bread in the toaster and takes out options for me to put on the toast.  ‘Is there something else I can do to make your day a little better?’

‘Eat some toast with me?’ I say, distracted by the way her robe was hanging just a little bit off one shoulder.  I trace a finger on the exposed skin and then drop a kiss right there. 

‘If you tell me about your day and what happened?’ she replies sweetly. 

She listens while I complain a little and encourages me to eat one more slice and then another.  She holds my hand and traces a finger over my tattoos while she listens.

We spent the evening mostly just talking and it felt so right.  After last week, something feels a different.  Something has changed.  Because, here we were moving to the living room eventually, and we were just telling each other about our week, eating snacks, laughing and it didn’t feel forced or like something was missing.  It just felt comfortable.

When we started yawning, we went to bed together and only when we were cuddled under the blankets, bodies so close, did I start kissing her behind her ear. 

She always responds to this in a way that makes me crazy.  She always tilts her head a little towards me, like a part of her wants to shield her neck from me, but she would also close her eyes and hold her breath right before she inhales shakily.  There are always some goosebumps when I whisper right near her ear.

I pulled her underwear to the side just enough that I can feel her with my fingers, to check if she was wet enough for me.  I kissed her more, let my cock rest against her ass while I rocked my hips a little, I ran my hands over her back and then around her body to cup her breast.  I pinched a nipple just hard enough to make her respond to the gentle pain. 

I had to spread her open a little to get myself against her hole that was a lot more lubricated after some more attention.  I pushed my tip into her and that was already overwhelmingly good.  I worked myself into her slowly, bit by bit, getting my cock wet with her mess.  ‘Every fucking time,’ I growl into her neck.

‘What?’ she asks, pushing back against me.

‘I am surprised every time how good you feel.  Like it’s the first time every time,’ I admit as I am deep inside, pressing against her cervix. 

‘Mmm, I forget too,’ she admits.  ‘I’m never prepared for the feeling of when you’re this deep.’

I stay deep while I work one arm under her neck so I could hold onto her tits with one hand, and my other hand held onto her lower stomach, spreading my fingers wide and pulling her closer to me.

We work together to start a slow but strong rhythm where our bodies just took over, she reached back to grip my thigh.  While we clung to each other and breathed together, we took our time, and it all built so slowly.  I knew she was close when her pussy gripped me tighter and her breaths came in shorter bursts.  We came together, panting and rocking and moaning.  I get a ridiculous sense of possessiveness whenever I know my cum is inside her.  I stayed right there, falling asleep with her in my arms and my cock softening inside.  I never wanted to fall asleep any other way again. 

***

I wake up in the morning, when I feel the loss of her body heat when she got out of bed to go to the bathroom.  I rub my eyes and roll over into the warm spot on the bed she had left behind and inhale her smell that was all over the sheets.  When she comes back, she was adjusting her underwear, her chest was bare, her hair a mess.  I lifted the blankets for her, so she could get back in bed with me.  She snuggles into my chest and gives a big sigh. 

‘Morning, baby,’ I say, my voice croaky.

‘Mmmm,’ she replies, dropping a kiss on my sternum. 

‘Are you still sleepy?’ I ask her. 

‘Mmmm,’ she answers. 

I stroke my fingers across her shoulders and bask in the warmth she brings back to me by being near me.  ‘I have big plans for today, my Peach,’ I say softly.  ‘Sleep some more, rest while you can.’

She is quiet for a while before she lifts her head to look at me.  ‘Which plans?’ she asks, resting her chin on my chest.

I exhale a small laugh.  ‘That got your attention, huh?’

‘You got my curiosity,’ she smiles back at me.

‘Well, I can’t tell you, because part of it is that you are kept on your toes by not knowing what’s coming next,’ I say, brushing her hair back.

‘Oh,’ she says with a slow nod.  ‘Why does it sound like a lot of work?  Staying on my toes?’

‘Not literally on your toes, luckily.  But maybe on your knees,’ I say with a wink.

‘Oh my god,’ she says, her expression showing apprehension and interest.  ‘Can I have a large cup of coffee before we do that?’

‘Baby, we are going to shower and have a nice breakfast before we start.  As much coffee as you would like,’ I answer her question.

‘Are you going to make the breakfast?’ she asks.

‘I will.  Some pancakes?  Some fruit?  Some bacon?’ I make suggestions.

‘Whose house do you think you are in?’ she asks, hiding a laugh in my stomach.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

‘I don’t have fruit, or any of those things,’ she says.

‘Oh, right,’ he says.  ‘Alright, so I will go get something, and you sleep.  When I come back, I am dragging you into the shower with me.’

‘Deal,’ she kisses me on my lips with a smile on hers.

I wake her a while later, and we shower together and while I am so very tempted, I do not start anything.  I tell her to just put on her robe and not bother with much more than that. 

We eat scones with butter and jam for breakfast, it was all the little shop had.  We drink coffee.  We have an easy, lazy start to our Saturday.

‘Today, we need an activity.  Like baking cookies or carrying on with our Lord of the Rings marathon,’ I start.

She frowns a little.  ‘Okay, we can do both of those.  Even though,’ she waves a finger, ‘it’s probably not justified to call it a marathon if we do it in sessions this far apart.’

‘Good point,’ I agree.

‘Any other ideas for the day?’ she asks.

‘Many,’ I smile. 

‘Please tell me,’ she says with raised eyebrows.

‘Every hour,’ is all I say.  ‘We can start with you kneeling on your pillow if you are ready?’

‘What do you mean ‘every hour’?’ she asks as she actually gets up.

‘You’ll figure it out,’ I tease her.  ‘You need to take the robe off, Peach.’

She slips it off and tosses it on the couch.  ‘Yes, Noah.’

She kneels down and I watch as she takes a moment to kneel like she is supposed to.  Her hands held behind her back, her knees apart, and I’m proud to see, her back straight with her chest out.  ‘You are so beautiful, my god.’

She blushes just a little. 

‘Alright,’ I start off and I sit on the couch in front of her.  ‘We are playing a long game.  And it starts off with nothing touching your pussy until you are dripping.’

She looks up at me.  ‘Okay.’

‘I mean literally dripping,’ I clarify.  Then I take off my sweats, but leave my boxer briefs on. 

‘Okay,’ she nods.  ‘This sounds interesting.’

‘So, you may choose one of the following, I can fuck your throat, or I can pay attention to your tits.  But I think we should do both anyway,’ I say to her and I see her nipples harden at my words. 

‘Both, please,’ she says.

‘Where do you want to start, baby?’ I ask her. 

She smiles at me with a look of apprehension.  ‘I think I want your cock in my throat first.’

‘Good choice, my good girl,’ I praise her and get up to stand in front her.  I lower my boxers until they are mid-thigh.

‘May I use my hands?’ she asks, looking up at me from under her lashes. 

‘You may do whatever you want, except touch your pussy,’ I tell her. 

‘Thank you,’ she says and she bring her hands forward.  She wraps her hand around my cock, and then she kisses the tip quickly.  She teases me with her finger, running it along the veins, teasing the head, even touching my balls.  I watch her touch me and I watch her face as she concentrates on her actions.  I keep my hands at my sides. 

‘I love the way you touch me,’ I say softly.  ‘I love how confident you have become.’

‘I do feel more confident,’ she says, seeming really happy that I noticed. 

‘I’m proud of you, baby,’ I say and then lean down, unable to resist kissing her quickly. 

She lingers after the kiss, her eyes closed just a second longer than they needed to be.  Then she teases me with her tongue.  Taking my head into her mouth, paying attention to all the spots she has learned that I liked.  Her mouth felt warm and welcoming and soft.  When I feel myself slip past the resistance into her throat, and I feel how she gags around me, watch her keep me there even though it must be uncomfortable for her.  My heart clenches – that she would do that for me?  She pulls back, coughs, and wipes at her chin, making sure everything was all neat, before she does it again.  ‘Noah?’

‘Yeah, baby?’ I say so breathless.

‘Please fuck my throat?’ she says looking up at me with uncertainty.  I feel light headed and turned on and my cock, that was already leaking precum, flexed dramatically. 

‘That’s a big step, baby,’ I try to make sure she knows what she is asking for.

‘I know,’ she says and I see her think it over.  ‘But we can stop whenever I want right?’

‘Of course,’ I say.

‘I want to try,’ she says.

‘Alright,’ I say slowly.  ‘We take it easy.  A little bit at a time.’

‘I trust you,’ she says submitting herself.  ‘I’ll let you know if it’s too much.’

‘I’m not going to hold your head, I’m just going to thrust a little, then you can pull away if you need to,’ I explain what I feel comfortable with. 

She nods.  ‘Okay.’

She sticks her tongue out a little bit and opens her mouth.  What did I do to deserve this?  I am careful when I put myself in her mouth.  Her hands come up to hold the back of my thighs.  She has never done this before.  As soon as I feel her throat relax, I slowly start thrusting with small movements.  It feels good to let that instinct take over, to move my hips. 

I reach with one hand to stroke her hair, just because I feel possessive.  How does she look so amazing doing this?  She grabs my other hand and our fingers lace together so quickly and naturally. 

‘I love the way you move your tongue,’ I gasp out.

We take short breaks after a few thrusts.  And slowly she can take a little bit more each time, she still gags a few times, but she is being so perfect.  Whenever she is overwhelmed, she squeezes my hand and I ease up a little.  She makes little sounds and I am sure she is not aware of it – little reactions to me.

‘You take me so well, Peach.  Your throat feels so good.’

When we take a break she says, ‘Keep yourself inside longer.  Stay there until I squeeze your hand.’

‘I can do that,’ I say.  I push all the way in and stay there.  She keeps her head in place, her nose touching my body, her eyes closed in concentration.  She gags and squeezes my hand at the same time and I ease out.  ‘Fuck, baby.’

‘Mmm, again,’ she asks, her eyes teary. 

‘Are you alright, baby?’ I ask her softly.

‘Yes,’ she nods, seeming sure.

I get my cock deep in her throat a few more times, until she asks me to take it out and it feels so fucking good.  ‘One more time and I’m going to cum,’ I warn her. 

So, on the last one, she takes me deep and she moves her head just a little, and then she opens her eyes and looks up at me, to see if I was enjoying what she was doing.  Before I can really process her beauty and the way it makes me feel when she looks at me like that, I cum in her throat.  She struggles a little and coughs, but it’s all so cute and endearing.

I go own on my knees in front of her.  ‘Thank you,’ I tell her and then I kiss her lips briefly, giving her time to breathe. 

‘That was good,’ she says, smiling, proud of herself. 

‘So good, baby,’ I agree with her and smile at her. 

‘There’s something strangely comforting about that,’ she says her demeaner changing to shy suddenly. 

I cup her cheeks and kiss her again.  ‘Don’t be shy.  You’re allowed to feel that.  Do you know why that is?’

‘No, I’m not sure,’ she says. 

‘How are you feeling?  How’s your pussy feeling?’ I ask her innocently.

‘Wet, I know that,’ she answers.

‘Really?  Even though I haven’t touched you yet?’ I ask, still finding it incredible that just bringing me pleasure turns her on.

She just nods. 

‘I want to feel it so bad,’ I admit.  ‘But I can’t.’

She seems really disappointed. 

‘So now I am going to sit here,’ and I sit down flat on the floor, ‘and do this.’  At this angle, I have to just tilt my head up a little bit to reach her breasts with my mouth.  I hold one in each hand, and take my time with them.  ‘This is comforting to me,’ I say looking at her, and her eyes are shiny and soft when she looks down at me. 

She is so indescribably perfect.  I love the way they look, and fit in my hands, and feel in my hands.  The way they jiggle is my weakness.  They taste so right on my tongue.  The way she smells, when my nose is buried right between her breasts, is like home.  Familiar and attractive.  This is what her shirt smelled like, the one we had to add to our applications with the agency – she smells like mine.

She sighs and pushes her chest closer to me and her fingers are calmly carting through my hair. 

I suck on her nipples that are hard and tease them with my tongue.  Here I get lost.  I feel like I could happily do this for hours.

Slightly breathless she asks, ‘Which cookies did you want to bake?’

I laugh.  ‘It was just an example.  We can do anything you want to.’

‘You mentioned cookies,’ she says and then gasps when I bite lightly on her nipple.  ‘So now I want cookies.’

‘Absolutely, baby,’ I say.  ‘As soon as you are dripping, we can go bake cookies.’

I get hard again while paying attention to her.  Her hips are moving slowly against nothing.

‘I’m going to check you,’ I tell her.  I look down between her legs, and I see a string of her body’s natural lubricant dangling down.  My dick twitches.  ‘Fuck, baby, you are dripping, it’s happening.’  I lay down and cannot stop looking and then I see how very soaked her pussy lips are.  Without thought I get back up and I kiss her mouth, brushing my tongue against hers, she moans into my mouth and she grabs on to me.  ‘You are so fucking perfect, how are you this perfect?’

She seems slightly flustered. 

‘Sit on my face?  Baby, please?’ I say, moving as fast as I can to get my face under her.  I pull her down onto me and I make quick work of her, swallowing her down and then sucking on her clit.  Her reaction is desperate.  ‘Not yet, Peach.  Nothing inside yet.’

She whines wordlessly and her hips move against my face.  It does not take long at all before I can tell she is about to cum.  So, I give a parting kiss to her, and then apologetically tell her to let me up. 

‘We can bake cookies now,’ I say wincing a little.

‘That is mean,’ she pouts.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say and then I take her hand and kiss her knuckles. 

‘You are not sorry,’ she whispers. 

‘It’ll be worth it a little later, I promise.  One hour, then I’ll edge you again.’

She put on a t-shirt only, big and baggy, no underwear.  She was still a little flushed when she went to the kitchen and we measured out the ingredients for the cookies.  She was needy, and I felt so needed when she leaned into me, and made excuses to touch me.  

‘It needs to rest in the fridge before we can roll it out,’ she says, walking to the fridge.

‘How long?’ I ask.

‘At least an hour,’ she says closing the fridge door and turning around to look at me.

‘Well, we could just start a little bit early?’ I suggest with a small smile.

She nods eagerly. 

‘Are you still wet?’ I ask her, feeling just a tiny bit sorry for her.

‘I feel it on my thighs,’ she almost moans.

‘Poor baby,’ I say, taking her hand and leading her to the couch, where I sit down and I guide her to straddle my lap.  ‘Kiss me.’

She rests her forearms on my shoulders when she leans down and kisses me, and while the kiss is sweet, I can feel her desire.  I hold on to her waist for a moment and enjoy her weight above me and how I can feel her breasts through the shirt.  Then I reach my hand between her legs and run my fingers along her pussy and feel that she really is so very wet, it has spread to her upper thighs.  She stops breathing and makes little sounds in my mouth when I circle her clit a little. 

I love that we are at the point where I get to just touch her, and that I feel so familiar and comfortable with her that I know what to do when I touch her.  I know what she will like. 

‘Ride my hand, baby,’ I encourage her.  ‘But no cumming yet.’

She gyrates her hips slowly and I touch in the right place.  When she stops kissing me and throws her head back, I know we need to stop.  ‘No, Noah, please don’t stop,’ she whispers, looking back down at me.

‘I have to, baby,’ I answer.

‘Look how hard you are,’ she points out. 

‘I have an incredibly beautiful woman sitting on top of me,’ I say as explanation.

She scoffs just a little bit.  ‘Do I have to wait another hour now?’

‘Yep,’ I confirm.

‘What are we going to do?  Because I need distraction.’

We spent a few minutes cleaning the kitchen after the cookie dough-making and then I suggested cleaning something else, so she offered up her fridge.  We cleaned everything, arranged her stuff, threw away some older things, washed the racks with soapy water.  When it was all clean, she looked at the clock. 

‘Yes, it’s time,’ I say.  ‘Come sit here, on the counter.’

I went down on my knees and pushed her knees apart.  ‘Now we need to sanitise again.’

‘Gladly,’ I say and then I eat her again.  Her taste filling all my senses, her smooth skin amazing against my tongue and her reactions when I suck at her clit beautiful.

‘I need something inside, Noah,’ she says so softly.  ‘Please.’

‘Mmm, no.  Soon, baby,’ I try to make her feel better.

‘Can I suck your cock again?’ she asks.

‘After you cum,’ I agree. 

She cums against my tongue after a while and then she takes me into her mouth.  I stop her before I cum.  The frustration levels were high.

After that we rolled out the cookie dough, pressed out shapes and placed them on a cookie sheet and put them in the fridge while we waited for the oven to preheat. 

I sit on the edge of the couch and tell her she may ride my thigh.  She smiles.  ‘That brings back memories,’ she says and I feel her wet cunt against me.

‘Good memories?’ I ask.

She rocks her hips tentatively, getting a feel for it, shifting around.  ‘Yes, good memories.  Were they good for you?’

‘Of course they’re good for me,’ I answer honestly.

‘I was so scared,’ she admits.  ‘But I just didn’t know yet how safe I was with you.’

‘I knew you were scared,’ I say, feeling her wetness spread.  ‘But I was too.’

‘You were?’ she stops moving for a few seconds to look at me.

‘I was so worried I would do something to make your anxiety worse.  I wanted you to feel good with me,’ I admit. 

‘I did feel good with you.  I still do,’ she grips my shoulder and moans a little.

‘My proudest achievement,’ I say with a smile, but I mean it more than I care to admit to myself.

She takes my face in her hands.  ‘I feel safe with you.  I have never felt this safe before.  You should be proud of that, because I have never felt like this with anyone else in my whole life.’

I kiss her lips immediately to try and hide my face a little while the weight of what she said hits me.  It hits me hard.  I wrap my arms around her and pull her closer and kiss her deeper.  ‘Nothing means more to me, baby.’

‘I am getting closer,’ she says, her movements becoming more urgent.

‘Don’t cum yet.  Next time, I promise,’ I say into her mouth.  She forces herself to stop and I hold her through her disappointment and as her heart rate slows.  We lay down on the couch together, she still has her pussy against me, she holds on to me tightly. 

We get up after a while to put the cookies in the oven, and they bake quickly.  They cool and we put them in containers to keep them fresh. 

‘It’s time right?’ she says her eyes pleading with me.

‘Can we go to your bed?’ I ask her.

‘Yes,’ she says quickly and she is quick to lead the way there. 

‘Lay down on your back,’ I instruct.

She is in the centre of the bed and she looks inviting.  I sit beside her and kiss her hips and her stomach, lifting the shirt a little to get access.  Then my hand goes back between her thighs, and I tease her a while, making her back arch up before I sink two fingers into her slowly.  She lets out an ‘oh’ of pure relief.  I give her a moment to adjust to the feeling of something inside of her, and then I fuck her roughly with my fingers.  Her whole body reacts, she grips my fingers. 

‘Listen to how wet you are, Peach,’ I tell her as the sounds were obscene.  She cums quickly and there is a wet mess on my hands, my wrist, the sheets. 

‘Noah,’ she moans a little and I go kiss her for a moment, before I make her cum again with my fingers, so intense she grabs my wrist. 

After three orgasms, I stop.  ‘Now another hour break.’

‘You are so hard, baby,’ she says.

‘Soon,’ I say. 

We watch reels on her phone, laying on our stomachs right next to each other.  The hour goes by fast when we are laughing and joking together.

‘From now on, I am going to use you to edge myself.  So, I am using your body, but I need to try to not cum for as long as possible.  So, when I tell you to stop, you need to listen, okay, baby?’

Her eyes are wide when she nods her understanding.

‘You, however, may cum as many times as you want to,’ I say and instantly kiss her because I cannot wait any longer.  ‘Please kiss my neck,’ I practically beg.

Her tongue leaves little wet spots on my neck as she does what I ask of her.

‘Please take the shirt off now,’ I ask her.  Then she works it up her body and takes her lips off my neck just long enough to slip it up and off.  ‘I want to fuck you so bad,’ I whisper in her ear.  She gets goosebumps. 

‘I’ve wanted that all day,’ she replies.

I sit in the middle of the bed.  ‘Come sit on my lap, please,’ I hold my arms out and pull her into me as she sits on my thighs and her hands rest on my shoulders.  I am achingly hard between our bodies and when she leans in to kiss me again, my cock is trapped in the friction.  I travel down with my lips and kiss at her chest again, along her collarbone.  ‘You are perfect for me,’ I say not being able to think of a way she be any more perfect, any more of exactly of what I want.

She kisses the very top of my forehead.  ‘And you are perfect for me,’ her voice is soft.

‘Please can I be inside you now?’ I ask, desperate to feel her.

‘It’s where you belong, remember?’ she replies and lifts herself up high enough that she can take a hold of me and guide me inside her herself.  She works herself down on me, her eyes closed. 

‘Oh fuck,’ I moan, engulfed in her heat and wrapped in her arms.  ‘Every time,’ I repeat myself and then I bury my face in her neck while I breathe and wait for her to get used to me. 

‘Every time we are this close,’ she says and kind of stops to think before she continues, ‘I am sure that nothing else will ever make me feel like this.’

I kiss her because I don’t know what to say.  How to tell her that I completely agree.  I lift the both of us up, and lay her down on her back and start thrusting into her.  The sound of our bodies coming together always drives me crazy.  Because I am so turned on, I fuck her faster and faster, until I feel it build and my balls start to feel tight and I have to pull out of her quite suddenly to stop myself from cumming.  She gasps a little and I have to concentrate so hard to stop myself from spilling all over her.

‘Sorry, baby.  Give me a minute,’ I say.  My cock flexes ridiculously between her legs, dangling so close to what it wants.  I grab it and tease her clit with my tip, running it up and down her pussy.  And when I’ve calmed down enough, I slip inside her again.  I fuck her slower.  ‘Just take me this deep, I know you can take me this deep.’

‘God, you feel so fucking good,’ she barely manages to get it out in between thrusts and shaky breaths.  ‘Noah, please use me.’

‘I am getting close again,’ I tell her.  ‘Then I have to pull out.’

‘No,’ she pouts. 

‘I want to make this last, baby.  I want to be inside you as much as I possibly can be,’ I admit. 

‘You can have that anyway.  Whenever you want,’ she says immediately. 

Her words put me right on the edge and I pull out again.  She groans in frustration.  ‘I’ll be right back inside.  Just wait a little bit.’  Nothing in the whole world made me feel as wanted as when she needs me inside of her.  The comfort it seems to bring her.  ‘Ready, baby?’

‘Please, Noah,’ she opens her legs even wider. 

I enter her and stay there, still for a while, just appreciating her again.  ‘Thank you,’ I whisper to her.

‘For what?’ she whispers back.

‘Accepting me into your body,’ I say softly. 

She strokes the back of my head.  ‘But, Noah, baby, it’s where you should be.  You don’t have to thank me.’

‘I do,’ I almost cry.  ‘You don’t understand how much it means to me.’

‘I think I might understand more than you think.’

I rock into her, and stay as deep as I can and grind into her and keep my body close to hers.  ‘Can I stay inside next time I edge?  But then you need to keep still, baby.’

‘Yes, I’ll do what you need,’ she promises.

‘It’s going to happen soon.  You feel too good,’ I say.

‘That’s okay, just tell me what you need.’

‘Now, baby, now,’ I push in all the way and stay there.  ‘Keep still, baby.  Please, please.’

I can feel how she fights her body’s instincts in order to stay still for me.  She strokes my hair.  ‘It’s okay.’

I breathe against her shoulder.  Tears fill my eyes and surprise me a bit, but it feels so intense.  But the way she comforts me is too much for me, but I want it so much at the same time.

‘Noah,’ she whispers.  ‘My sweet, Noah.’

‘Will you please cum with me next time?  Please, Peach?’ I ask her, the game I was playing moving to the back of my mind as she takes over my thoughts.

‘I will,’ she promises. 

My hips move and I thrust into her, our bodies stay glued together, except for when my hips move back.  I thrust hard, and I would be worried that I’m hurting her, but the way she grips me lets me know that whatever she feels, she likes it.   But just to be sure, ‘You alright?’

‘Yesss, mmm,’ her sounds hitching every time my cock hits home.  ‘I hope you’re close.’

‘It’s not going to take long,’ I say.  ‘You almost there?’

‘So close,’ she breathes out. 

‘Wait for me?’ I beg.

‘I am trying, I promise,’ she says.

‘Hold on, baby girl,’ I say as her pussy grips me so tight, I know she won’t be able to hold back much longer.  ‘I’m right behind you.’

For a moment, that stretches into a small eternity, I feel her convulse, I feel her body start to shake under me and I feel her cries of pleasure against my skin.  I want this every day, I want her every day.  And then while she is still busy, I cum.

‘Take it all, baby.  All of my cum, it’s all yours,’ I moan out as my hips gracelessly pump into hers and then I stay right there for as long as she would allow me.

We do this three more times, each an hour apart.  I edge a few times, until I cannot take it anymore and then I cum inside her.  Still, I feel that it was not enough.  But we are exhausted.  We shower lazily and eat some ramen and a few cookies for dessert. 

We get in bed, and she rests her head on my chest.  She places her hand flat on my chest and then slides it down the side of my ribs and then she tucks her hand in between me and the mattress. 

I take a shaky breath.

I know that I cannot do this anymore. 

Chapter 20

 You

The diagnosis was unexpected. 

You sat in the doctor’s office while she was telling you about it, and you felt shaky and like your breath was not reaching your lungs and that you were kind of floating near your body, but not inhabiting it.  You heard what she was saying, and yet it was not sinking in.

You felt nervous and afraid.  You did not know how you were supposed to feel.  How you were supposed to process the information?  How were you going to explain it to him?

Driving back home you took it slow, no music.  You needed the silence to be able to not feel overwhelmed and overstimulated.  You dreaded seeing his face now.  His reaction scared you more than any of the realities of the situation ever could.  You wanted to protect him from this more than you wanted to save yourself. 

You were sitting on the couch staring off into the distance for a while, you don’t really know how long, before you felt him appear.  He smiled at you and came closer and soon he realised that you were not yourself and he sat down next to you.  You felt the familiar dip next to you. 

‘What happened?’ he asked his voice immediately worried.

You were quiet trying to decide which words to use.  He placed his large hand on your lower back in a gesture of comfort and you felt the heat of it through your shirt. 

‘I am… I have cancer,’ you say, your voice flat, but you needed it all out as quickly as possible.  ‘It already started spreading.  I…,’

‘You just had some neck pain,’ he whispers after being quiet for very long. 

‘Yeah,’ you nod.  ‘It’s in my spine.’

‘How,’ he started a sentence he did not know how to finish.  ‘It doesn’t….’

‘I’m sorry,’ you say to him. 

‘What?  Why are you sorry?’  he asked with the deepest frown on his face.

‘I know this is going to hurt you more than it’s going to hurt me,’ you say.  Looking in his eyes the emotion hits you finally. 

He shakes his head and leans in to you and holds you.  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he whispers.  ‘What do we do?  How do we fix this?’

‘There’s not much to be done.  It has already spread all over,’ you reply into his shoulder.

‘But surely, they gave you some advice?  Some options?’

‘I can try chemotherapy.  It can slow the spread.  Maybe give me more time, but by the sounds of things there is no fixing this anymore,’ you explain.

‘But you didn’t have symptoms,’ he is trying to make sense.  ‘How, I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t either, Noah.  I am so sorry.’

‘Stop apologizing,’ he says.  He holds you quietly.  After a while you feel his breathing start to pick up and you feel it begin to shake, and hitch.  You hold him back tighter and for the first time since you have gotten the news, you feel the tears prick at your own eyes. 

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ you say your voice small.

‘Baby,’ his voice cracking.  ‘I don’t want you to hurt.’

 Noah

It took me some time to convince her to do the chemotherapy.  She didn’t want to, arguing that it was pointless.  I argued that it gave her some more time.  Gave her more opportunities to do things and live.  I am sure that she is doing it purely for me.  But I feel we have to try. 

So, we are in the car where Nick is driving her to the hospital.

We moved a few years ago.  She made the amazing and selfless decision to move closer to Nick for my sake.  That way I could have my two people near me.  The move felt like a new beginning for us, we picked a new flat together and moved in and I had an input, and for a while we could both imagine that we were just a normal couple moving in together.

While our lives have so many strange things about it, we were so normal and everyday that I often forgot the fact that I was dead.  She loved me so fully and completely despite the fact that I couldn’t be real for her.  We were happy and delusional and had started to live in our own little world where everything was what we wanted.  This news cracked open that illusion.  Reality caught up with us.

‘You say you have snacks and something to drink?’ Nick asked ad he pulled into the parking area of the hospital.

‘Yes, Noah packed me a whole little goody bag,’ she answered him.

‘I will be here to pick you up,’ he says with small, reassuring smile.  ‘You sure you don’t want me to come?’

‘Noah is with me,’ she says.  That’s all the explanation she needed to give. 

‘I got it,’ I say to Nick.  ‘Thank you, brother.’

‘Good luck,’ Nick said somberly.

She grips my hand to the point of pain as we walk inside.  They take her to a chair with so much shit set up around it.  I stand back and watch as they connect her to all the medical equipment.  Then they slide the thick needle into her arm where the chemicals that is supposed to help her live longer will enter her body.  She doesn’t flinch.  She watches as it slides into her skin and they place a bandage over to keep it in place.  The people at the hospital were being so nice and sweet and told her to not hesitate to call them if she needed anything.  But my sweet girl seemed numb, she nodded along but her eyes were empty.  That upset me so deeply. 

When we are alone, I approach and cup her cheek.  ‘You okay?’ I whisper.

She nods.  ‘I think so,’ she gives me a small smile.  It’s barely there. 

We have to be discreet.  She cannot have a full-blown conversation with a ghost in the hospital.  So, she has a book to keep her entertained.  I sit down in front of her on the floor, she hooks one leg over my shoulder and I roll up her pant leg, and I start massaging her calf and ankles and feet.  She touches my hair every now and then, hugs me with her leg by squeezing me closer to her.  Later we swop her legs. She falls asleep at some point. 

Six hours later, Nick is waiting, smoking a cigarette by his car.  He seemed anxious.  Relief flooded his face when he sees us.  She seemed okay at this time, but I know we are in for a rough night. 

‘How was it?’  Nick asked.

‘It was great,’ she answered sarcastically. 

‘Sorry, that was a stupid question,’ he scrunches his face. 

‘No, I’m sorry.   It was okay.  It’s just really long, that was the most annoying bit,’ she slips into the car and leans back into the seat. 

Nick squeezed my shoulder.  ‘And you?’

I nod in determination.  ‘She took it like a champ.’

‘How did you take it?’  he asked.

‘It broke my heart,’ I admit quietly.

 You

‘Hey, Noah,’ you call to him.

‘Baby?’ he answers.

‘I need your help please,’ you approach him and he looks at you warily.  You take out the clippers from behind your back.  ‘It’s time.’

You can see the moment he realizes and you see the pain in his eyes.   He gets up without a word and walks closer to you and takes the clippers from your hand and then kisses you solidly on the lips.  ‘It’s not that bad yet,’ he says softly.

‘No, but a few clumps came loose in the shower and I just cannot handle it.  I need it to be over with,’ you explain.

‘Okay,’ he nods and takes your hand and he starts for the bathroom. 

‘No, can you do it in the kitchen?  I don’t want to see it in the mirror,’ you say and you feel shy about admitting that.

‘Whatever you want,’ he smiles.  When you’re in the kitchen he drags a chair closer.  You sit down and take a deep breath.  ‘You have a hair tie?’ 

‘Yeah,’ you dig the one you had out of your pocket.  ‘Why?’

‘So can keep the hair I cut together,’ he says and he gently and with so much care gathers your hair together and ties it at the back of your head. 

‘I thought I would feel sadder about this,’ you admit something to him again.

‘It’s just hair,’ he says simply.  ‘You ready?’

‘Mmm,’ and you feel him cut the hair with a scissor, you feel the weight of the hair disappear.  It takes him a moment before he holds the ponytail out to you.  You take it and hold it, run your fingers through it.  He leans over your shoulder and kisses your neck affectionately. 

‘Let me know when I should continue,’ he whispers. 

‘Now, please.’  You say, beginning to feel very anxious.  ‘Let’s get it over with.’

You hear the harsh sound of the clippers being turned on and then he starts running it over your head.  Whisps of hair fall down your back, over your shoulders, past your face and you hold your breath to not get any of it in your mouth.  It also helps to keep the tears back.  He takes his time; you feel him go over some spots to make sure its even.  When he switches the clippers off, the silence is deafening.

He runs his hand over your scalp.  ‘All done,’ he says. 

‘How does it look?’ you ask, brushing across your body to get the hair off you. 

‘It looks like you,’ you hear his voice is thick.  Both of you keep quiet for a moment, both trying to keep composure for the other one.  You busy yourselves with gathering the hair on the floor together and picking it up, using a dustpan to get the finer hairs.  When it’s all clean, he grabs your hand and pulls you to him and he wraps his arms around you.  With your face buried in his chest, you feel safe and like it will all be okay.  His tall frame is concave so he can hold you with as much of his body as he can.

‘Let’s go look,’ you say after a while and you drag him to the bathroom.  Even though you knew what you were going to see it shocks you.  ‘Jesus,’ you say immediately touching where your hair used to be. 

He is behind you nervously. 

‘I don’t hate it,’ you say after a while with a smile.  ‘It looks bad ass.’

He smiles with relief.  ‘It does,’ he agrees.  He steps closer and also touches your head.  ‘You are the most beautiful human,’ he kisses your bald head a few times and then buries his face in your neck.  You feel the wetness of his kisses and tears and pretend not to notice. 

You turn in his embrace and kiss his amazing lips.  God you will miss these lips.  You make the first move and slide your hands under his shirt and lift it up until he lets go for a moment to lift his arms so you can pull the shirt off.  You press yourself against his bare chest, immediately back to kissing him again.  He leads the way to the bed without losing contact with each other.

He lays you down and starts by climbing over you.  He kisses your stomach where the sliver of skin shows and moves your shirt up with his nose and he kisses every inch he can find.  He slides the shirt off with practiced ease and then kisses your chest, between your breasts and removes the bra you had on.  He lavishes attention on you with kisses and gentle bites. 

You grab his head and bring his mouth to yours and then you change your positions, so that he is on his back.  You undo his button, move the zipper down and then shimmy his trousers and boxers down at the same time.  All the way down, you nearly fall off the bed to get his long legs free.  He laughs for a moment.  ‘Do you want me to take your socks off?’ you ask.

‘No, it’s okay.  The pants were almost too much,’ he jokes.

You huff a laugh, ‘It’s not my fault your legs are that long.  Scoot up, please.  You are too tall.’

He moves up against the pillows, and lays diagonally across the bed.  This was really the only way his frame fits on the bed.  You have even taken to sleeping next to the each other stretched diagonally across the bed.  You settle down between his legs that he spreads for you. 

He was already halfway to being hard.  Before you touch him at all, you just look for a moment.  You have been feeling the strong need to memorize some things.  You find yourself staring at all kinds of things about life thinking that you must file it away.  But mostly it happened with Noah, who was worth remembering the most.  Every single inch of his being was being recorded in your mind.  His cock was slowly standing up, his balls contracting every now and again.  He was pale just like the rest of his body, his head slightly darker.  When he flexes again, you wrap your hand around him at the base where your hand almost rests on his balls.  You hear him let out a sigh.  You lick at his frenulum and he immediately bucks his hips. 

‘Sorry,’ he breathes out.  ‘I’ll keep still.’

‘It’s okay, baby.’  You lick again, pushing your tongue against him, before taking the head into your mouth.  You stay there for a while, until he was fully hard in your hand.  You start to take more of him in your mouth.  You go slow, going slightly lower. 

‘Oh fuck,’ he breathes repeatedly.  ‘Baby.’  He is struggling to keep his hips down on the bed and it gives you a thrill to see the impact you can have on him.  Even now.

‘Keep still for me, for a moment,’ you say, looking him in the eye.  He nods.  You sink down on him as far as you can go.

‘Fffffff, I…….  B…baby.’

You smile.  You love it when he couldn’t get a word out.  You keep at him, following the thick veins with your tongue, paying a lot of attention to his glans.  You lose yourself in your task.  You memorize the weight of him on your tongue, the slightly salty taste of his skin.  How his skin is so impossibly soft.  How he reacts to your actions.  How you feel his balls clench every now and then. 

Before Noah, you never understood why women would willingly do this.  Now you felt privileged to get to taste him and see him be so vulnerable with you. 

Eventually he stops you, and sits up to kiss you.  Your jaw hurts a little, but you kiss him back.  ‘Goddammit, I love you,’ he says into your mouth.  ‘Please take off your pants.’

You lay back to wrestle your pants off, he grabs the ends by your ankles and yanks.  ‘Lay back, like you were,’ you tell him.  He complies quickly and without argument.

You straddle his hips, and he moves the pillows so he is sitting up.  With you in his lap, you were closer to a similar height.  Your faces close to each other’s.  He grabs himself and guides himself to your entrance and then you lower yourself onto him.  ‘I love you,’ you breathe out.  You take it slow and just grind into his hips.  His hands moving all over your body, even lovingly over your head.  You breathe each other’s breath, skin to skin, whispering words of love into the other’s mouth, throat, ear.

After you both come, you fall forward onto him and he holds you.  He pulls the blankets over you both and you lay there like this is where you want to be for eternity – him still inside.  ‘I will always love you,’ you try to explain to him what has been battling through your mind.  ‘Nothing is going to stop me.’

He hugs you tighter.  ‘Death has already tried, my love.  It has no power over us.’ 

Noah

Nick drops us off after the final chemo session with bags of food and drinks and I hug the man before he leaves.  ‘I cannot thank you enough,’ I say gripping onto his jacket.

‘My guy,’ he says.  ‘I wish I could have done more.  I am so sorry for you both.’

‘You have done so much for us,’ I say pulling back.

‘Let me know if you need anything else,’ he smiles sadly.

Inside, she is eating food straight from the container.  I leave her, and go the bathroom, where I unroll the old sponge mattress and put a sheet over it, bring blankets and pillows.  I make sure there’s tissue, ice water a washcloth.  Then I join her for dinner and I have nice time.  She is making jokes and smiling at me. 

We shower together, we wash each other’s backs and I can tell she is trying to enjoy feeling human before the side effects hit. 

We sleep together on the tiny mattress, I keep holding her because she is cold.  She is always cold after.   We fall asleep peacefully.  But soon, I am woken by her ripping herself from my arms and she leans over the toilet on her knees and she throws up all her dinner.  It comes in waves, I kneel behind her and rub her back, keeping my body close to hers for heat.  She starts sweating, but her skin is ice cold.  I feel all the muscles in her back contract as she keeps vomiting.  She is shivering.  Eventually she sits back and I wipe her mouth with the wash cloth.  She blows her nose and takes a few sips of water.  I open my arms and she climbs into me as close as she can get.  I lay us down and cover her with the blankets. 

‘I am not doing it again,’ she says.  I thought she had fallen asleep.  I keep quiet.  I know what she is saying.  I suspected this was coming.  ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t.’

‘It’s okay, love.’ I rub my hand along her arm to warm her up.  ‘I understand.’

‘I would rather just enjoy what I have left,’ she whispers.

I start crying, but I try to hide it from her.  But she knows.  She grabs my hand, and weave our fingers together.  ‘I’m sorry, Noah.’

‘Don’t be,’ I sob. 

‘You know,’ she sighs.  ‘The part that scares me?  I don’t want to leave you.  I am not scared of anything else.  Everything else is nothing.  I am terrified of not being with you.’

This makes me cry even harder.  I am shaking by the time I get a reply out.  ‘I am scared of a lot of things.’

‘Like what?’

‘This.  Watching you suffer is tearing me apart.  I am scared of you being in pain.  But, yeah.  I don’t know what will happen when…’  I cannot say it. 

‘When I die,’ she finishes for me.

I nod. 

‘Well, if my soul lives on,’ she says.  ‘What if I don’t remember you?  You know how you couldn’t remember anything.’

My heart clenches in pain.  ‘I will remember for us.  I will remind you of everything you need to know.’

‘I am trying to commit things to my memory.  Trying to burn it into my being, so that I will remember.’

‘Things like what?’  I ask, curious.

‘Mostly you,’ she answers.  ‘Running my fingers through your hair, how soft your lips are.  How cold your feet are in bed.  How your hand makes mine look ridiculously small when our fingers are together like this.  Your kindness, and your laugh and how utterly loved and safe I feel in your arms.’

I ugly cry into the skin of her bald head and squeeze our fingers together and pull her body even closer to mine.  I feel her start to hiccup too.  She reaches back with her free hand and cups my head.  ‘I will find you, love.  I found you once, I can find you again.  Just look out for me, I’ll be there.’

When we calm down, we make up scenarios of what our souls will do together.  She is exhausted, but she keeps going.  We fall asleep with wishes hanging on our tongues.

You

After all the bad side effects of the chemo were gone, I started feeling normal again.  My hair was growing back out, I gained a little of the weight I had lost to all the vomiting back and my body felt like mine gain.  It was a dangerous thing.  I could so easily fool myself that everything was fine.

I decided to fill my days with as many good things as possible.  Which meant spending time with Noah.  For months we made a point to just do all the things we wanted.

We have game nights with Nick, where we would play video games or board games, order loads of food, listen to music and waste hours and hours laughing and having fun.  It was so good to see the two friends together.  To see the friendship they had after all the years.  To see a different side of Noah when the two of them were heated in their discussions or arguments about game rules.  I memorized the carefree way he plays.  The freedom is his reactions.

You go on road trips together often.  You pick famous places you’ve never been and also pick obscure spots to go see if there’s anything worth seeing.  Noah always packs bags of travel accessories, he has gotten very good at it.  He remembers all your medicine, your favorite sweets, drinks, tissues and extra jackets for when it gets cold.  He knows how you will react better than you do yourself.  He knows what you will need.  While driving, you guys play the same games you started on the trip to see Nick for the first time.  You hold hands while walking around.  You cuddle and watch countless sunsets from the hood of the car.  Each trip was immeasurably special – not because of where you went, but because of the opportunities you had to burn memories into your soul. 

You spend hours cooking together in the kitchen, picking things you have both wanted to try.  This does not always end in success.  But it does end with dances in the kitchen, or kisses in the kitchen, laughing in the kitchen.  It ends with meals enjoyed together, feeding each other, cleaning up together.  Memories.

Lazy days laying about, reading books or watching movies – as long as the two of you were tangled up in some way, it didn’t really matter.  During this time, you learned by accident that he gets full body chills when you play with his ears.  You realised he falls asleep within minutes if you run your fingers through his hair.  You craved the feeling of his weight on you – his head resting on your stomach, his legs thrown over yours, his whole body on you with his lips against your neck.  You paid attention to all the details.

You and Noah had a lot of sex.  You both always took your time with it, savoring every moment you had to bring each other comfort and pleasure.  Even when you were being rough and harsh there was so much love.  It was a way to show each other the anger, disappointment, heartbreak that you both felt.  And at the same time, it was a chance to be close and pour affection and love into the other one.  Each time had a lot of ‘I love you’s whispered.  Each time had a rush of overwhelming emotion that caused at least one of you to cry.   

When you start to realise that the medicine was not really taking away your pain anymore, you knew it was time to have a conversation with Noah.

While you were in bed, his head resting on your shoulder while your fingers ran up and down his bare back, you take a deep breath before you begin.  ‘Noah?’

‘Mmmm,’ his face squished against you. 

‘I think the time is getting near,’ you say.

‘What time?’ he mumbles.

‘My time.  I don’t think we have very long left,’ you keep your voice low, like it would soften the words.

He lifts his head and looks at you with sadness.  ‘Why?’

‘The pain is getting worse,’ you say with a grimace.  ‘But, the reason I bring it up is because I have a terrible thing to ask of you.’

He closes his eyes.  Like he knows.  Maybe he does.  He knows you better than you know yourself.  This hurts your heart so much. 

‘I don’t want to suffer through it, baby,’ your voice cracks. 

He nods against you.  ‘I don’t want you to either, love.’  You run your finger over the frown on his forehead, wanting to smooth out his worry.

‘Will you help me?’ you ask.  ‘When it’s time?’

He shakes his head with small movement.  ‘I don’t want to,’ his face crumples in pain.  ‘I want to do anything you need, but how am I supposed to do that to you?’

‘I hate that I am even asking,’ you sniff.  ‘I will do it myself.  But I need you there.  I need your face to be the last thing I see.  I want you in my brain when it dies.’

Tears stream down both your faces.  It has been happening so often lately and yet it still broke you to see his nose turn red, his lashes clumped together.  He was still so fucking beautiful.  After a while of contemplation, he says, ‘Alright.’

Noah

Today was the day. 

When it started getting bad, it went downhill very quickly.  Her pain became worse, she had no energy, no appetite.  The life was draining out of her before my very eyes and it was infuriating.  I had rage in me that it had to be like this.  She deserved so much better. 

While I understand her decision completely, it didn’t make it easy for me.  The emotions warring inside me made me nauseous all the time.  But I wanted her to get what she wants. 

I made her her favorite breakfast that she nibbled on a little.  We spoke at length about out favorite memories of our time together.  We tried to make love, but I couldn’t get hard, so I made her come with my tongue and fingers instead.  We cried a lot.  She fell asleep on my chest, even though she said she wouldn’t, she didn’t want to waste any time with me.  But she was tired.  She was tired in more than one way. 

I had to get into contact with Nick to hook me up, because we didn’t know the area like he did.  He asked friends, that asked friends and eventually we got a lethal dose of prescription pain medication that we would use tonight.  She made sure that it was more than enough. 

So that evening, I crushed up the pills in the kitchen, while she was hugging me from behind.  I placed the powder in a glass and filled another one with water.  I placed it on our bedside table.  After a hot bath and a cup of tea she dressed in her most comfortable pajamas and we sat together on the bed. 

‘What will happen to you?’ she asks, leaning into me, her head on my shoulder. 

‘I really don’t know,’ I answer back.

‘What if you are not okay?’ she sobs. 

‘Don’t worry about me,’ I counter. 

‘I only worry about you,’ she cries.  ‘I’ll stay longer if it means you will be okay.’

‘It won’t, love,’ I put my arm around her and hug her into my side. 

‘Here’s what I think you should do,’ she says through the tears.  ‘If you can’t find me, I think you should go to Nick.  You two will take care of each other.’

I laughed.  ‘I did think of that.’

‘I am so sorry,’ she starts.

‘No,’ I stop her. 

‘I am sorry for so many things,’ she carries on.

‘Please, don’t be sorry for one single thing.  Please don’t think that even one single minute with you was not the best moments of my existence.’

‘You can’t remember your whole existence,’ she counters. 

‘I know.  But I know,’ I sigh.

‘You were definitely the best part of mine.  I can never express how much I have loved you since I have known you.  I owe my soul to you.’

I try to find words, but they won’t come to me.  There isn’t really anything I can say to her that I haven’t said already.  ‘You are my soul.’

She calls Nick to tell him she is about to do it.  He is supposed to notify authorities.  They have a brief conversation.  And then I thank him and tell him I love him.

She pours the powder into her mouth, makes a face at the bitterness and then swallows it down with a few gulps of water. 

She kisses me quickly.  ‘I love you.’  Then she lays down and cuddles into me and I hold onto her for all I am worth. 

I grip her while I cry and cry and hope to whatever god is listening that she will feel no pain.  That she will be okay wherever she will go.  I pray that I will find her again.  I feel her breathing stop after a while, her grip on my shirt goes slack, but I keep holding on.  The warmth of her body lingers and it comforts me, until I start to fade away.  I can feel myself slip.  Her peaceful face is the last thing I see before I, too, am gone.

 You

The fog around you is thick to the point where you find it difficult to tell what time of day it is.  Through the wisps of white you see tall trees all around you.  The temperature around you is comfortable, even though it seems like it should be cold, it isn’t. 

You have no idea why you are here or where you are going, and the fact that you cannot remember does not upset you.  You walk slowly through the trees and the almost complete silence until you see a path.  You follow the path as it winds between the trees and the further you go, the fog seems to lift little by little.  Then a warm light becomes visible and as you get closer you see a cabin.  Warm, yellow light glows from the windows, smoke curls out of a chimney, it is calling you closer.

Then when you have almost reached it, the door opens and a tall man steps outside.  Your heart beats faster at the sight of him.  He is wearing all white, beautiful tattoos showing on his skin, his dark hair frames his face.  He smiles at you.  Like he knows you. 

He takes light steps down to you.  ‘Hi,’ he beams. 

‘Hi,’ you say, unsure of what was happening.

‘Are you lost?’ he asks you.

‘No,’ you say.  ‘I don’t really know.’

‘It’s alright,’ he says.  ‘I can help you if you need it.’

You look into those eyes that are so dark they are almost black and you know that he is safe.  He feels familiar.  ‘Do I know you?’

‘Come inside for some tea?’ he says reaching out his hand.  You take it without a thought and your fingers twine like you have done it a thousand times before.  ‘I have a lot to tell you.’

Inside is warmth and comfort and home.  You sit near the fireplace and he hands you a cup and you drink it.  It is just like you like it.  ‘Who are you?’

‘More importantly, who are you?’ he counters.

You frown, not knowing the answer.  ‘Do you know me?’

He nods.

WARNINGS:

Lots of talk about death (not always in a depressing way). Smut - oral sex (f receiving), p in v, unprotected sex, fluffy loving sex, fingering. More warnings: This is the first work I have written that I am posting. I really hope someone enjoys it.

A/N While this is mostly a fluff piece, there are quite sad moments in the story and lots of crying. This is a work of fiction. There are mentions of Noah's past and as we do not have good information, I filled in the blanks. This is not an accurate depiction of his past.

1. You

You would not say that you believed in ghosts. Not at all. It made no sense and your brain needed something to make sense for you to accept it. However, lately you have been noticing things, and it has been happening for a while, but you have always made it off as nothing. Surely, you just made a mistake, forgot that you had done it. But it has come to the point where you cannot deny it anymore.

It started with simple things, like you would be certain that you did not leave your pen there on the desk. Sure that you did not open the curtains in your bedroom. Items in cupboards just slightly out of place. These things were so easy to dismiss as nothing. But then you started feeling like someone was in the room with you, a presence – this was not a scary feeling at all, more comforting, like the presence was there for good reasons. You sometimes felt a slight warmth, like a breath near you. Even your pet would look at something that you could not see, never reacting in an alarming way but just looking.

Intellectually, you knew it did not make sense. You also knew that if you were really feeling these things, it should probably worry you more than what it did.

Dreams have been more vivid, you still have a hard time remembering what you dream, but they have changed. You would often wake up feeling incredibly sad, even crying. You would also wake up mid-laugh with no memory of what caused these emotions in you. And most damning was that you would be sure that you had been held – still feeling the warmth of an arm around you or a hand holding yours, even though you were very much alone in your bed.

This was not limited to your home. Although it was rare, you would occasionally feel a hand on the small of your back when you were stressed, a hand on your shoulder when you would start to panic, a whispered ‘breathe’ when you became angry.

Because your brain longed for logic, because you have always been one to look for rational explanations, you had tried to figure it out. Your conclusions came to the fact that you probably needed to see a professional. But you did not do that. You do not really know why not.

One night you woke up, not sure what woke you, but there was an unmistakable hand holding yours. You felt the weight of it, the heat, the size. You took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, because you couldn’t see anything in the dark. You squeezed the hand gently and it reciprocated with equal tenderness. You reached your other hand over to feel, too scared to move the hand being held. But you knew if you tried to touch this hand it would disappear and that just broke your heart, made it clench in pain. So, you left it. You just held the hand, trying to get information about the hand without seeing it or moving again. The hand was larger than yours, long slender fingers and it held yours with deliberateness.

Another night you were woken by a voice whispering your name, right by your ear. You were sure that it was him even though him talking or making any sound was very rare. You woke up, smelling smoke and immediately shot up to see what was going on. A field nearby had caught fire, causing big billows of orange smoke to be visible when you looked out the window. You could see the flames, but it wasn’t near enough to be of danger to you, but the wind was blowing some of the smoke in your direction so you closed the windows. You were almost relieved when you smelled the smoke on the curtains the next morning, because you were sure for a second, you had dreamt the whole thing.

Things started escalating as soon as October hit.

You would feel the bed dip with a weight behind you, but no one was ever there. When you unlocked your phone in the morning, a song would be paused, ready to play. It was sometimes songs you knew and loved and sometimes songs you had never heard, never knew existed. The song would always have something in it that you needed – lyrics that made you feel hopeful or even just a fun song to lighten your mood. You would always try to accept the message as best as you could. You felt the hand in yours more often. You realised it was not as often as you would have liked.

The disappointment in you when no song waited for you in the morning was enough to ruin your day. You knew that you were losing your mind – and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

2. Noah

I was near her and that was what was important. I knew that I was better when I was near her. More real. But I kept reliving a moment in my life that evening and it just would not stop. I knew that my emotions bled through to her often, so I tried so hard to keep these memories at bay because they were not pleasant for me and I knew she would feel some of it in some way.

Memories were very vague for me, there was so much of my life and who I was that I just cannot recall. But certain pieces were clear, some just less fuzzy. I sometimes did not even know myself.

The memory was of the day that I died. This one was annoyingly clear. The sun was shining bright, it was a hot day. I had the window of the car rolled down. When my dad lost control of the vehicle everything slowed down in my mind, like I had time to process and stop what was happening, prevent this tragedy from taking the lives of everyone in that car that day. But I couldn’t. I remember bracing my hand on the roof of the car as it started to flip, my head being smashed so painfully against the frame of the car. The continuous motion that felt like it went on for so long. When it finally stopped, I was lying there, the sun burning me as I watched blood pooling around us. Most of the blood came from a head wound my father had sustained. I knew they were all dead. I knew I was too. I made it the longest, only officially dying in the hospital a few hours later. All alone.

I cannot even remember what car we were in. I cannot remember who else was in the car. I cannot remember what my father looked like. But the feeling of my pain shooting through my body was detailed in my mind. Did I even have a mind anymore?

Over and over this played. I knew she was dreaming about it when she started clenching her hands into fists and her breathing became uneven. I did not want her to have bad dreams. She would not even understand where this dream came from.

I have been able to touch things lately. Not just accidental movements after trying for ages like it has been for years. I have tried leaving her notes in the beginning. But I could never hold the pen successfully. It took immense concentration in the beginning, but it has been getting easier slowly. Now I could leave her notes if I wanted to, but what do I say to her after years of being here with her. She can hear me sometimes, but I do not want to scare her. I try to be subtle. Sometimes I just feel like she needs me. And I wish I could be what she needed so bad. So, this evening, I lay down next to her and hold her fists between my hands as best I can. Hoping to provide some comfort while we both live through the accident repeatedly.

3. You

You woke gasping through a sob. Your head hurt, your muscles were so tense, but you remembered a lot of the dream. You knew the images were not yours. You knew you had to keep remembering. So, you leap out of bed as fast as you can, head pounding at the sudden movement. You went straight for a pen and the first scrap of paper you could reach. You wrote down some of the images before they flew away never to be recalled again.

Car accident. Yellow car. Blood. Tattoos.

You tried to think of more. You really tried so hard, and added ‘hospital’ to the list. A fat tear splashed on the paper and then only did you realise you were still sobbing. You stood up straight, wiped your cheeks and tried to take a deep breath, but it shook.

You got ready for work, washing your face with cold water. The whole day, you were distracted and you could not focus. You have had dreams that were strange before, where you couldn’t remember the details. Writing down the memories of this one worked so well, that while you were constantly clutching at the crumpled paper in your pocket, you didn’t need it anymore, you knew the words on the paper so well now.

The tattoos were new. You knew it was significant. You feel like the accident was strangely familiar to you in a way, but the tattoos that covered the arms and hands of the person was a new detail. You regularly closed your eyes throughout the day trying to visualize what they looked like. There were tattoos on his neck also, but his face was clear, pale and smooth. You always had a feeling he was a man. A male? You felt sure now. You felt utter frustration that you could not remember what the tattoos were of.

You took a deep breath when you felt a warmth on your shoulder. He was here. Focus on anything you could remember, even if it seemed silly, you told yourself.

Red, there were red features in a mostly black and grey mass of art covering his arms. You hoped it was not blood that you saw.

You saw blood pooling from wounds sustained in the accident. So much blood. The driver had black hair. And he had dark hair also, but not black.

Then an image shot through your head of a hand pressing flat against the roof of the car in desperation to stop himself from getting hurt. The hand was the most clear, vivid image you have ever managed about him. The hand was really large, with slender fingers, exactly what you felt when your hand was held during the night. But now you had bright light shining on it and you knew so much more. The nails were short and neat. The thumb was bony and stood out far to the side. The tattoos were so clear, there was no way your mind could have come up with this. An image of a goat with red eyes and a red horn on the back of his hand, very elaborate calligraphy on his knuckles and a Leaf-Village symbol on his index finger. A crescent moon right where his index finger meets his hand on his thumb’s side.

You grabbed a pen and tried drawing what you could remember, it was not great, but it was something. You took the drawing, the paper from your pocket which you tried to smooth out and put them between the pages an empty notebook you found in your bookshelf. That evening, you placed the book and a pen right by your bed in case you needed to take notes again.

You had taken medication during the day to calm yourself down and to help with the pounding headache, so you fell asleep quite easily. You felt his hand rest on your arm as you were falling asleep and you pictured the tattoo there.

4. Noah

There was a strange hopefulness in me as I watched her draw the picture of the back of my hand. She truly saw me in the dream. I wished that it could have been a better dream, one that was not terrible for the both of us. But it clearly stuck with her.

As I was laying with her, that very hand resting on her arm, I wondered if there were other ways I could tell her who I am. Who I was. Despondently, I tell myself, yet again, that I barely knew who I was. I could not even remember my name.

Since the tattoos got her attention though, I searched through my mind to find a memory that had something to do with my tattoos. I could see them all on myself now. I had many. Sparser on the legs but still so many to choose from. I thought of the Moon Lady on my leg, I had fond memories of getting her done. Not super specific, but I was laughing with the artist. It felt lighter, happier and I kept thinking of that, while slowly making circles with my fingers on her skin.

5. You

Yellow walls, framed pictures, happiness.

You were laying on the couch, your hair damp from the shower, the window open to allow the cool morning breeze in. Your eyes were closed as you tried to relive the dream you had last night. The whole vibe was so different from the previous dreams that you enjoyed it and felt such relief to not feel your heart clench, the moment you woke up, with sadness.

He was getting a tattoo done on the outside of his left leg, just above the ankle. He was laying down then sitting up - constantly changing position throughout. The artist was a man about his age, with a mass of dark hair pulled back in a mess at the back of his head. While you couldn’t know what they were talking about, there was clearly a bond between them, joking and laughing all the while. You tried to focus on him. You needed to know more. His hair was long, well past his shoulders. Dark brown eyes. A smile that made your heart clench. He smiled with his whole face. His eyes squinting almost shut, a brief exhale with white teeth showing. He would also pull a pained face every now and then from the tattoo gun dragging across his skin.

You tried to get clues about the tattoo shop, to look out of a window, but his attention was focused on his friend and you couldn’t really get anything useful. You wish you could record the dreams and go through them frame by frame.

You felt fingers carefully touching your hair. You keep your eyes closed trying to determine if it was maybe the breeze, but it was definitely not. You were always so scared of scaring him away if you were to look or even reach out and touch his hand back.

The fingers started to gently comb through, as gentle as every time he decided to touch. It was rare during the day, it mostly happened when he thought you were sleeping. You sighed deeply, enjoying the feeling. And then you smell him. It was brief whiff of clean, fresh, masculine.

Tears well up immediately and you do not even know why.

You swallow, take a deep breath and decide to be brave. “Can you hear me?” you whispered.

The hand disappeared from your hair. You did not move. You waited a while and then you felt the hand back at your hair, stroking a strand away from your face. You hold your hand out, palm up. “Can you hear me?” you ask again. A single finger strokes a line in your palm. Your breath catches. The touch sent a wave of goosebumps across your whole body.

“Who are you?” you asked. You wait for a long time and get no answering touch. “Do you know who you are?” it was the only thing you could think of. A moment, then a cross was drawn in your palm. Your heart starts to beat so much faster. You sit up, folding your legs in front of you, keeping your eyes closed. You placed a hand on each knee, palm up. You felt such nervousness, not wanting to scare him off, but desperately wanting answers. You needed to ask carefully.

“Do you have tattoos? Did you have tattoos?” you grimace, not knowing how to approach this with more tact if you did not have more information. One line on your left palm. Yes. “Why are you here? With me?” You get no response. “Do you know why you are here?” You try again. Again, no response. You badly wanted to open your eyes. You do not even know why you were keeping them shut. You blink them open and you see absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

“Are you still here?” One line. Yes.

“Are you trapped here?” A cross. No.

“Do you know who I am?” Yes.

“Did you die?” your voice is barely audible. Yes.

“In a car accident?” Yes. “I am sorry.” He squeezed your hand.

“Do you need help?” No response. “Do you need closure or peace or something?” No.

“I am not afraid of you. Should I be?” No.

Each of his reactions were slow and deliberate. It felt so real when he touched your hand that you wanted to close your eyes again, so that you could picture him there. But he was there. You needed to know the rules of this. He has spoken before.

“Can you speak?” A hesitant no.

“You have spoken to me before?” Yes.

“But you cannot now?” No.

“Only sometimes?” Yes.

He took both of your hands, and pulled them together, giving a brief squeeze before the hands disappeared. No more questions.

6. Noah

I enjoyed it when she was home the whole day, because it was so much easier to stay present. I was not always. I disappeared sometimes. She was puttering around her small place dressed in stretchy pants and a large shirt, her hair messy. She was so beautiful like this.

She had on a playlist of all the songs I have left her. I could not understand how I could not remember my own name, but had a whole cache of music in my brain. My head?

Each song I chose was with a reason, but it often worried me she would see the wrong reason. She would stop what she is doing every now and then to listen to the lyrics, sometimes even looking them up. Sometimes she looked at her phone with an expression on her face that clearly said she did not like the song, it made me smile. Some songs she would straight up laugh at me – it felt like that. Some she would sit and listen, nodding along or tears welling up. Some songs she knew and she would sing along and even dance. I joined her, but she did not notice.

Things have changed since our limited conversation. I did not scare her and that made me bold. When she was on the couch, listening to the music still, legs crossed as she lay with her arms above her head, I sat by her. When she fell asleep, I got closer and ran the back of my fingers across her cheek. She leaned into my touch, a small smile on her face. Maybe she was not as asleep as I had thought. So, I kept stroking her skin, then traced an eyebrow, ran a finger down her nose. She reacted so perfectly. Times like this I wish I were real with more heartache and passion than I could explain.

“Thank you for the songs,” she exhaled. I cupped her cheek then. I kissed her forehead.

She felt it, because her eyes shot open, but she could not see me. She had a blush on her cheeks. Adorable.

“Did you just….?” She could not finish the question. Her palm was not ready for me to answer, but I as soon as I touched her hand, she flattened her hand, and I answered her.

She was quiet so long I started to panic, thinking I had crossed a line. I managed a soft, whispered, “Sorry.” This was easier it seemed when I was in stressed.

Her eyes went wide, and she looked around, but she still could not see me. “I heard you,” she beamed. “Don’t be sorry, it was sweet.” I felt relief.

She touched her fingers to her forehead where I had kissed her. After some time, she said, “I don’t know if you have control over what I see in my dreams about you… but you need to give me a clue so I can figure this out.”

I drew a line in her palm, meaning that I will try.

I tried very hard, putting all my concentration into it, “Is it okay that I am here?” I whispered.

She frowned. “Did you ask if it was okay that you are here?” she whispered back.

Yes.

She took a long breath before she answered. “In the beginning, I was sure that I was losing my sanity. I was a maybe a little afraid. But you became a pleasant addition to my days.”

I smiled at her, but she did not know.

“I miss you sometimes,” she added. “Where do you go when you are not here?”

“I don’t know,” I managed.

“How long have you been here?”

“Years.”

“Years,” she exclaimed. Her face contorted in confusion. “I was not aware of that. You never made yourself known.”

“Couldn’t.”

“Why here? Why me?”

I could not get another answer out. So instead, I placed my hand in hers, pressing our palms together.

7. You

You woke up gently with your fingers wrapped around two of his fingers. Without letting go, you stretched and rubbed your eyes with the other hand. “You did it,” you said sleepily. You turn back to where he had to be next to you, and brought your other hand up to cup his. If you kept your eyes closed, you could forget that he was not real, that is how solid he felt. “I saw you walk out of the tattoo shop,’ you sigh. “I saw the sign.” His other hand joined. “I just need to figure out how that leads me to you.”

You got up later and sat at your computer with a cup of coffee ready to start the search. Mixed emotions coursed through you. You typed the name of the tattoo shop and immediately got a list of results. It was in a small town very far from where you were now. You have visited this town before, loved it, thought of going back many times. You were confused by this information. How did he end up here, so far away, with you?

Now that you knew the location, you knew what had to be searched next. But you did not really want to. Getting answers here would make everything too real. It would take away the small morsel of hope you had.

You felt his hand on your shoulders, quietly encouraging you to continue.

You typed in the name of the town followed by 'fatal car accidents'.

There were not many results, but you reluctantly started clicking through, reading news articles and other bits, quickly skipping if you saw it was not the one you needed. Eventually you clicked on a short article in the digital newspaper. It had a small black and white photo and your whole chest felt constricted. It was him. You read through it slowly.

You turn your chair around completely, so you could face him, held your hands out and he took both with his. “This is a little confusing,” you breathe. He squeezed. “You were alone in the car when you… “

He took one of his hands away. “The article says it was dark and the roads were slippery from rain and that you must have lost control of the car. It doesn’t give much more than that,” by this time you were speaking so softly. You gave him a moment, knowing this is not what he remembered. “In the dreams the sun was so bright,” you add. You knew he understood.

“Your name is Noah,” you finally said it out loud. His name feeling almost familiar on your tongue. He takes your hand again and squeezes so hard it is almost painful. “Noah Sebastian Davis.”

Then, while the tears are gathering in your eyes, one of them escaping and slipping down your cheek, your heart breaking for this man that was not really there, you saw a flicker of him. Like signals were lost in his broadcast and saw him on his knees in front of you his head hanging, his hair, cut short, falling forward, while his hands were up in yours.

You suck in a breath so fast, and feel tingling goosebumps run through your whole body. You tried to keep your cool, not knowing what to say. He was processing some significant news and you did not want to be insensitive by freaking out about seeing him. Even if it was brief, the image was seared into your mind. The stunning beauty of the man kneeling in front of you would be easy to recall and you would do so often.

Once you have calmed down, you tried to focus again. “Do you remember this accident at all?” you asked him. He drew a cross in your palm. “I will figure it out, don’t worry,’ you reassure him. “We will put the puzzle together.” He squeezed your hands again, both of them.

You hear a faint and sad, “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry it was not happier news,” you say equally softly.

“Thank you for my name,” he clarifies.

You squeeze your eyes shut, realising what a big deal it must be for him to know that. “It suits you,” you say with a small smile.

That night as you were reading before it was time to sleep, you felt the dip on the bed and then an arm drape around your middle. You smiled sleepily and put the book down. “I saw you today, Noah,” you said. “When I was telling you the news, I saw you for a moment.” His arm tightened briefly. But other than that, you got no response. You fell asleep feeling the weight of his arm, seeing the image of him in your mind.

8. Noah

I was lying next to her, she was sleeping deeply, her deep steady breaths accompanied by the lightest of snores. Learning this knowledge about myself was such a peculiar feeling that I did not know what to make of it. My name felt foreign and so familiar at the same time. How could I not have known my own name. But knowing it felt like such an important piece of the puzzle of who I was. I would say the name, trying it out, often. My name was a bigger shock that finding out that I did not die like I thought. My mind must have gotten things mixed up. But knowing I was alone in the car was a relief. Such a small mistake. And it cost me so much. I am aware that I do not even know everything that I am missing out on. But the heaviest of the burdens was not meeting her for real. The real me. Because I know we would have. I know it. Our souls have a bond that I cannot explain. It aches in me to know what we are both missing out on because of my mistake.

She sighed, rolled over, her arm reaching out and came to rest across my ribcage. Or where my ribcage should be. This was the first time this has happened. Normally when she rolls over where I am, she goes right through me, and she does not even know. Now, she is holding me. She knows, even in her sleep, she tightened her hold, pulling us closer together.

My moments of realness have been happening more often. I was trying to figure out why, what causes it, so I can make it happen more often. High emotions on my part definitely seem to play a role. But her feelings were also a factor. Hers were harder to solve. But I felt like I knew her better than I knew myself. In my bones, in my soul, I knew her. As she was getting to know me, it made me more real to her. But it had a physical effect on me also.

I rest my hand on her arm, and try to wiggle closer to her. I rest my lips against her forehead.

***

I leave a song on her phone. A calm but uplifting song in major. I want her to feel peace and contentment, because I do after hours of holding each other. She plays it on repeat while she gets dressed, brushes her teeth, fixes her hair. I watch her do mundane things all the time, my soul feeling at peace whenever I am near her. But, also, I feel so strongly for her that even the mundane is magical when she is doing it.

She is in a good mood this morning. Her usual morning grumpiness almost absent completely. While she is making breakfast for herself, she is moving to the song still playing, swaying with the sounds. I take a big risk and go behind her, placing my hands on her hips. She pauses and sucks in a breath, realises it was only me and relaxes again.

I have kept touching to hands only for so long, that the new sensation of her holding me while she sleeps and touching her so casually is overwhelming to me.

“Close your eyes,” I whisper right by her ear and I can see the goosebumps rise across the skin of her neck. Without hesitation she closes her eyes. The trust she has in me.

I turn her around, and rest my arms around her middle and start to sway the both of us side to side. Her hands reached out, her eyes still closed, and felt around, touching my chest, flattening her palms against me and running them upwards, slowly until she found my shoulders, resting her hands there close to my neck. She swayed with me happily, until she started to shuffle her feet to get us to start rotating slowly on the spot in the kitchen, her breakfast forgotten.

She was smiling in the beginning, but by the second play through of the song the smile faded and tears started falling from her shut eyes. Her lip and chin were quivering, like she was trying to hold back. I wiped away the tears on her cheeks, holding her face for a moment and then holding her closer to me, so that her head was resting against my chest. I was a lot taller than her. She cried for a while, keeping her eyes squeezed shut – I knew why.

“Why are you never real?” she asked, her voice strained. I had nothing to say. I just held her tighter.

9. You

He has not been present for a few days. You are worried and you miss him more than you care to admit. He is in the back of your mind the whole time, even when you are busy with other things. You have saved the photo of him from the newspaper on your phone and you look every so often. You think about the change in hairstyle from that day you saw him when you told him his name.

You are worried that the whole thing was all in your imagination. You also worry about why he would stay away this long if it was not your imagination. Every day you wish and hope that he would show up, be home when you got there, that he would leave you a song, a sign, anything.

It was six days after the dance in the kitchen when he was back. And the relief you felt was immense. You woke up in the middle of the night, and he was wrapped around you. Never before have you felt so much of him. His legs were tangled with yours, his arm around you pulling you back into his chest, his head in your hair. It was the best feeling.

You have stopped trying to make sense of this. You knew he was not real. But yet, he was so real. You had no idea how you could feel him, hear him and know this ghost or spirit or entity so well. You held him too, gripping his arm, as best you could, drinking in the feeling of having him back.

“Do I make you sad?” he whispered to you. His voice sent shivers down your spine.

“No,” you answer immediately, no thought necessary. “Why would you think that?” you whisper back.

“You cry often when I’m with you,” he said so softly it was barely audible.

You swallow and take moment. “I am sad sometimes. I feel sad about what happened to you. I feel sad that I could not meet you before it happened. But you do not make me sad.”

You feel him nod against you in understanding. He squeezed you with his whole body. He is real this evening like never before.

“Is that why you left?” you say turning to look at him even though you could not see him.

“Yes,” he breathes. “I don’t want you to be sad.”

Emotion wells up in your chest so much that it aches. But you swallow the tears. Instead, you take a breath and force more neutral tone to your voice. “You make the sadness better. I always feel better when you are here. I really missed you.”

“I’m sorry,” he kisses behind your ear. “I missed you, too.”

“Where did you go?”

“I don’t really go anywhere. If I am not here or with you, I kind of disappear,” he explains. “I came to check on you a few times.”

“I didn’t realise,” you say.

“I will always check if you are okay,” he says, his voice fuller.

“Why me?” you asked him, not for the first time.

He was quiet for a long time before he answered. “After I died, my whole being knew I had to find you. My soul, or whatever, went straight to you. I didn’t know why. But when I found you, everything felt right.”

You have never heard his voice this much; it was deep and beautiful. You could listen to him forever. What he was saying was even better.

“It does feel right,” you agree.

“I think I can hold you and talk to you from sheer relief that I am near you again,” he says this quickly.

“I am not complaining,” you smile. Keeping your eyes shut, just in case, despite the fact that it was dark in the room, you turn to face him and blindly search until you have your hand on his cheek, you feel his soft skin with slight stubble. How is he not real? “Please don’t leave again.”

Then he presses his lips against yours, slowly and deliberately. You inhale deeply through your nose. He was warm against you, you felt how his lips molded into the kiss, his body pulling yours closer. He pulls away, only to kiss you again and again. He was firm but gentle. It was everything.

“Fuck,” he exhales. “I have wanted to do that for years.”

With those words leaving his mouth, you see him again. You didn’t even realise your eyes were open. But in the dark you saw his outline, his dark hair a contrast against his pale skin. You wanted all the lights on, but you knew it would break whatever spell was cast in this moment.

So instead, keeping your eyes open to try and not miss a thing, you kiss him and you are more forceful than he was. His hand comes up over your ear as he holds you, and when you part your lips slightly to deepen the kiss he moans sweetly and does the same. Your eyes close because you could not help it. It was too good, too much and not enough. His hands were not still for long, his impossibly long fingers in your hair, in the shell of your ear, his thumb stroking your skin. When his tongue touches yours, so soft, the sensation courses through your whole body and you grip him, trying to get him closer, as close as you can get. He makes sounds that sound like desperation. You could die from this and your ghost would be his.

You fall asleep with your head on his shoulder, him stroking your hair, his one thigh between yours. If you could keep your eyes open all night you would, you were terrified of missing one moment.

But, gloriously, when you opened your eyes with the first rays of sunshine coming through the curtains, he was still there and visible. You were facing each other, still close together, clinging to each other almost. You had to pull your head back a bit to see his face properly. You drank him in, struggling to resist the urge to touch. His hair, shorter than the photo you have, messy, forward over his forehead, hiding his eyebrows. The slight pout on his lips, the slight stubble on his face. He was perfection. Literally nothing on his face was less than perfect.

You traced a finger down the length of his straight nose, lightly. When he started to wake up, he started fading and your heart sank. “Noah,” you say watching him fade into nothing.

“I’m right here,” he says, pulling you closer.

10. Noah

“What are you doing?” She is sitting up in bed, back propped up against pillows, the glow from her tablet illuminating her face.

She startled a bit, looked in my direction, but I knew she couldn’t see me right now. “Research,” she said her eyes back to the screen. “I think I have found something.”

“What did you find?” I sit next to her, close enough that I could see the screen too.

She winced. “It’s not all good news, unfortunately,” she starts. “From what I could gather, you were twenty-seven when you died. The dream I had of you dying with other people was bothering me, because the article said you were alone. Also, in the dream the sun was so bright.”

I just scooted closer. Talking was a bit difficult this evening. I laid my head on her shoulder.

She leaned into me before she carried on. “You were in another car crash when you were eleven, with your dad and other people. Everyone died in that crash, except for you. You must have combined the memories in your mind.”

Flashes of the blood pooling went through my head and suddenly I could see my younger self there instead. Absolute panic knowing everyone was dead, being pretty sure I was too. It made sense.

“Then I also know the tattoo artist’s name. Nicholas Ruffilo. You were very close friends; I found his social media and there are some photos of the two of you.”

She swiped through some photos and I felt a tug in my chest at these memories that I could not really remember. But I felt a connection to him if nothing else. It was the strangest feeling, seeing myself, knowing it is me, but not feeling the full link I was supposed to.

“It’s strange, isn’t it,’ she said putting her hand in the direction of my knee, finding it eventually and keeping it there as a reassuring gesture. I nod against her. “Do you remember any of this?”

“Not really,” I manage to whisper.

“Lots of instruments and middle fingers in the photos,” she snorts lightly.

I chuckled quietly.

“I can’t find any information about your dad, however. I think it’s a dead end there. But I can try and make contact with him,” she gestures to the photos, “I am sure he will have information.”

“Maybe.”

“Is it too much?” she asks.

I take her hand when I reply, “It’s a bit overwhelming, yes. But thank you.” I kiss her cheek.

“Okay, I will wait,” she says tenderly and puts the tablet away. She then comes closer and places her forehead against my one cheek, her free hand cupping my other cheek. It is a gesture of comfort. “Sorry if I pried too much.”

I shake my head, bringing the hand I was holding up to kiss it. “I appreciate you.”

I start to maneuver myself that I am between her legs, laying on my stomach, resting my head on her chest. I wrap my arms around her as much as a can. I can feel her heartbeat against my ear, I breathe her in. She wiggles slightly lower on the pillows and immediately holds me back, her arm across my back, then she gently scratches across my back, sending pleasurable shivers through me. Her one leg even hooks over one of mine.

“I appreciate you, too.” She says after some time.

“This,” I sigh, “is so much more than I ever thought I could wish for.” I whisper hoping my ability to talk does not slip away. “When I came to you, I thought I would just hang here forever, never being able to interact with you at all.”

Her scratching continues rhythmically. “You being here has made my life so much better,” she whispered back.

I was eternally grateful for her acceptance of this entire situation exactly the way it was. With neither of us really understanding anything. But I was not sure if it was as good for her as it was for me. Regardless of how I feel, I was still not real.

11. You

There was a song waiting for you, it was almost every morning now. It was upbeat with a female voice. You listened while waiting for the kettle to boil. As usual you took a while to fully wake up, so at first you had it at low volume, not really listening with attention yet. A lot of the times, Noah’s intention was the vibe and not necessarily the lyrics.

But a few play throughs later, as you were sipping your coffee a few words were captured by your brain and you stopped mid-swallow. You grab your phone and sure enough you were not imagining it. Touching Yourself by The Japanese House.

Your mind starts sounding like static in your own ears as you try to process what this means. Because you have wondered a few times how often he is present without you knowing. You knew he was not always present or whatever. You also trusted that he would leave you in moments that would require privacy, like bathroom moments and so on. You would also be lying to yourself if you did not admit that it has crossed your mind many times in certain moments; whether he was watching.

With your face hidden in your hands, you say, “Noah, are you here?”

“Yes,” he says sheepishly.

“Where are you?” you asked, looking up, but you could not see him.

“I am by the fridge,” he says.

You felt stupid as you look in the general direction of the fridge to talk to him, you were certainly looking in the wrong place, you often thought it must be funny sight to him. “This song,” you start.

“Yeah,” he says. You can hear the smile in his voice.

“What are you…” you trail off, the awkward feeling getting stronger by the second. “Are you trying to tell me something.”

“I guess so,” he says. There is a breathiness to his voice, like he is laughing.

“This one was not for the vibes?” you say your voice small.

“Well, no,” he says he sounded slightly closer. “The vibes are nice though.”

“Oh God,” you say hiding your face again. Not knowing if you should laugh or panic. “You were there?”

“Please don’t be embarrassed,” he says, very close now, but you almost want to back away from him.

“Noah, what the hell?” You are panicking and laughing at the same time, since your brain did not know which one to pick. You look up, wishing you could see his face to help you read the situation better.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I left as soon as I could. But…”

He takes your hands, and this anchors you. You knew where he was and felt him, making it easier to have this conversation a tiny bit. “But,” you say loudly, needing him to finish his thought.

“I cannot always make myself leave, you know,” he says. “I do not always listen to my own instructions.”

“You could have to told me you were there,” you say your voice getting higher in pitch each time you speak.

“I couldn’t make a sound and I was turned away, in the corner trying to leave.”

“You were trapped!?”

“No, that sounds harsh, I just couldn’t do what I knew I had to,” his voice calmer and lower.

Your brain was trying and failing to come up with something to reply with.

“I knew then that I had to tell you that this was a thing that could happen. I don’t want to be creepy. But I didn’t know how to bring it up,” he says his voice soft.

Despite your blush, you burst out laughing, head thrown back, from your belly. He flickered into view. You saw relief and shock on his face. “You decide to tell me with that song!?” You look him right in the eye now.

“Was it that silly?” he asked.

“Yes, you could have just said it. But I appreciate the thought you put into this one.” You grab his face and kiss him quickly. “I am still embarrassed, though.”

“Seriously, don’t be. But, in the future?” he asked.

“Well,” you say feeling weirdly emboldened. “In the future, I will ask if you are there.”

“And then you’ll tell me to fuck off,” he nods.

“Yes,” you kiss his chin, it was all you could reach without him leaning down. “Or, I’ll invite you to stay if you want to.”

His eyes widen as he looks at you, a small smile forming on his lips. “Interesting.”

12. Noah

She had the car packed and ready for the very long drive. I was going to tag along as far as it was possible for me to do. But I was very uneasy and nervous about the whole thing. At the same time, I felt excited. I did not know what to expect really. I knew this could be very eye opening or devastating, and mostly for her sake, I hoped it was a good experience.

She had contacted Nicholas and the only excuse she had to see him was to make an appointment for a tattoo. Then she obsessed over which tattoo to get, was in communication with him about the design and decided on a date and time.

I had a lot of input on the tattoo and I loved that she even asked me.

We stopped at a store where she ran in for snacks, me following behind, telling her to buy marshmallows. I missed them.

I knew she was not able to see me during most of the drive, but I put myself in charge of the music. She would tell me to skip or make requests if she felt strongly, but mostly we could listen and sing along quite pleasantly. I was nervous about the length of the drive and that she might start feeling sleepy so I kept things upbeat.

“Are you nervous?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said immediately. “How do I have this conversation without sounding like a crazy person?”

“I think you just need to be honest.” I said helpfully.

“Noah, honesty is not going to do the trick here. I need to convince him that this,” she waves her hand in my direction, “is happening without being weird. This is going to for sure be weird.”

I try to feed her a marshmallow from the packet, but she shakes her head. “Maybe you should wait until the tattoo is finished. What if he chases you out or something?” She looks at me in the wrong place, in horror.

“I didn’t think of that,” she said.

We stop about half way to fill up the car, she went to the bathroom and got a coffee. She was tired, so we did a sing along for a while to get her more alert.

“What if you find out something about me that you don’t like,” I finally ask what has been bothering me most.

She was quiet for a moment while she thought about it. “I am not very worried about that,” she said. “It did cross my mind, but I am sure there won’t be anything that bad. We all have pasts and did things we are not proud of.”

“I am terrified about what you might find.”

She reached out and I grabbed her hand, interlacing our fingers. “Don’t be,” she smiled reassuringly. “You let me know when I need to stop, and I will.”

We held hands the rest of the way, or my hand was on her thigh.

When we got to the bed and breakfast she immediately went for a shower and I waited for her on the bed. She came out of the bathroom wearing her usual oversized t-shirt she slept in, her legs bare, hair wet. She grabbed her pillow from her bag, threw it on the bed and then towel dried her hair before sitting on the bed next to me.

13. You

You were restless, you were stressed and nervous and you felt like something was crawling over your skin. You kept turning, flipping the pillow, taking a sip of water and you just could not settle down. You were exhausted from the drive, but you just could not let go and fall asleep.

Next thing you knew, Noah grabs you around your waist, whispered, “Come here,” and pulls your back so that you are between his legs, your head resting on his shoulder. He pushed the covers off to one side and his large hands were firmly running up and down your arms, like he was trying to get rid of the crawling feeling. He grabbed your hand every now and again when he made his way down your arm, he ran his hand through your hair. “You are okay,” he whispered. “Breathe,” he said.

You did not need much encouragement for that part, because his hands all over you made your breath quicken and deepen. You squeezed your legs together and tried to stop yourself from grabbing him back. You close your eyes firmly and turn your head towards him and press your lips firmly against his neck, he tilts his head ever so slightly to give you better access. You touch your tongue to his skin and taste him and the way it was all him with a bit of salt made you turn slightly in his grip and free your one hand from his ministrations so you could throw your arm around him and hold him in place as you lick up the column of his neck to his jawline. You do this slowly and deliberately.

“Jesus,” he moans and his mouth is desperate to find yours in a crushing kiss. It was a kiss of urgency, like you were holding back for way too long. You definitely were.

You turn your body as much as you can so you can access him more easily as your hands grab at his shoulders. He bites onto your bottom lip and drags his teeth as he pulls away and then bites into your neck gently. You grab his hair at the sensations he was sending through your body. You were both panting. His breath hot against your jaw as he finds his way back to your mouth. You kept your eyes shut.

He makes the bold move, because your boldness was turning into uncertainty for many reasons. He moved out from under you to hover above you, kissing you all the time. Your whole being was burning for him, every part of your body was alive with need for him, but your brain kept wondering how all of this was even possible. You actively decide to not worry about it, because no one knew the answer, not even Noah. So, you would just take whatever you could.

His hand lands on your hip and he runs it down your thigh and then over where he taps lightly. You ease your legs apart and he settles there like it was always where he was meant to be. He runs a single finger along the top of your underwear, back and forth, asking permission. You quickly squeezed his hand as an answer and then pushed his shirt out of the way and up his back, needing more. You manage to wrestle the shirt off him and then he sneaks his hand into your underwear slowly making his way to where you wanted him most.

“Is this okay?” he pants. You open your eyes and there he is in all his glory kneeling between your legs leaning forward on one arm, while the other hand was very gingerly touching you, his hair tousled from your fingers running through it, his dark eyes seemed even darker.

You grab his arm and lean forward needing to be closer to him, “Noah,” you breathe, “yes,” you nod. You kiss him messily and pull him back with you and when his fingers slowly drag through the wetness there, you gasp and he moans. He starts a rhythm with his touching, drawing circles with his fingers and it immediately drives you insane. You grip onto his back with urgency, not even knowing what you are trying to achieve other than to be closer to him, climb inside of him, anything. When your nails dig in, he moans again and the way his voice cracks, the deep tremble that vibrates through his throat is beautiful and filthy. “You are killing me,” you rasp.

He hesitates for a second. “In a good way?”

“God, yes, in a good way,” you barely manage to get out.

Then, he grips the edges of your underwear and starts working them down your hips. You lift slightly so he can slip them off entirely before he is back where he left off.

He kisses you, his lips just pressing against yours with insistence. You hear and feel his breath and you wonder for a second if breathing is necessary for him. But then he stops what he is doing so that he can press a single finger into you. He does this slowly. He squeezed his eyes shut, but you are in awe of him and just how impossibly ethereal he looks that you cannot look away if you tried. “So warm,” he says.

He readjusts himself so that he has better access to you, but this makes him more out of reach and you do not like this, but when he moves that finger inside of you with surety, curling it just slightly you throw your head back and let out a moan of pleasure. This makes him smile. When he adds a second finger, so that his pointer and middle fingers are working together you can feel the tingly, deep feeling starting to build up. He goes slower, like he knows exactly what you are feeling, dragging the feeling out longer. You move your hips along with him, he keeps gently pushing your thighs apart with his body. You reach for him and he grabs your hand, entwining your fingers together without a thought. Then the feeling reaches its peak and the orgasm washes through your entire body in intense but almost gentle way. It does not overwhelm you that you feel you want to push him away, instead when he works his fingers all through the orgasm, you gripping him rhythmically, it is just what you wanted and needed. The feeling is so intense that you feel tears stinging at your eyes, you try to blink them away, knowing that Noah will think he was making you sad.

But he already saw, and he was kissing your eyes, running his hand across your face to push your hair back as finally removes his fingers from you and then he lays between your legs, his weight comforting against you. “Are you okay?” he asks.

You can just nod.

“You are so amazing,” he whispers in your ear, he keeps his head buried in the crook of your neck. You reach your arm around him and hug him to you as close as you can. You squeeze your thighs around his hips. Then he maneuvers himself so he is next to you and he pulls you closer, so your head is resting tucked under his chin, he tangles your legs together. “Now, please get some sleep,” he mumbles and his arms rests across your waist.

You still wanted to ask about him. You still wanted to overthink the whole reality of everything. But your eyes were heavy, you were warm and so comfortable breathing him in that you fell asleep effortlessly.

14. Noah

Nicholas greeted her with a shy warmth when we arrived. He had a beanie pulled over his messy black hair. He showed her to his area, showing her the final design again, asking if she was sure, getting the stencil ready. I kept my hand on her lower back, I could see she was tense, breathing too fast, kept wiping sweat at her brow. She was panicking.

“You can take a moment before we start,” Nick said so calmly and with such kindness. I looked at him and felt familiarity. His mannerisms and slightly awkward demeanor seemed not only familiar but hit me so much deeper than I ever thought it would. After my death I have only ever felt a bond with her. I did not expect the fullness in my heart from seeing someone that had clearly been a dear friend of mine.

She lifts her skirt up where she stands in front of a mirror and Nicholas slides closer on his chair with wheels, holding the stencil. He patiently takes his time and asks her is she is happy with the placement, asks if she is sure. He applies it with gentle precision and rolls back to have a look for himself. When she convinces him that she was happy, he shows her to the bench. She settles herself on the bench he had ready, covered in plastic. She awkwardly tries to find a comfortable position and I can see that this is overwhelming for her. And I understand, the whole thing is a strange situation to say the least. She lays back a little and she exposes her thigh again. Meanwhile he is carefully wrapping the tattoo gun, placing cling wrap everywhere, filling little containers with ink. He is meticulous. While he is distracted, I stand behind her and I rub her back, squeeze her hand, run my fingers through her hair. I cannot offer any verbal reassurance; we are not sure if he would hear.

Both of us are sure that it is only her that can hear me. But we have no basis for this belief. We could be wrong. Now was not the time to test our theory.

Her skin is clammy by the time Nick comes closer to start the process. He asks if she is ready and she nods. He stretched the skin and starts. I can see the pain etched into her eyebrows immediately as Nick draws the first line. She puts a hand behind her back for me and I grab it and hold on.

“It is pretty painful,” Nick laughs softly and kindly. “You just let me know if you need a break or anything.”

“Thank you,” she chokes out. This was worse than she was bargaining for. I feel guilty.

I carefully rub her hand, even massaging at times. I would bend over and kiss her arm, her neck every now and again as a distraction and as encouragement.

“So how did you hear about me?” Nick asks. They have exchanged some pleasantries. Nick was trying to make her feel at ease, but he was also shy and it did not come as naturally to him.

She blushes when he asks this, because she has no idea how to answer this question. She takes a moment, while she is squeezing my fingers so hard. “I actually heard about you from Noah.” She says this while looking intently at him for a reaction of any kind.

He stopped tattooing and looked her in the eye, a slight rattled look on his calm features. “Noah?” he says while he is processing the information.

“Yeah. Davis.” She says and I can feel how her heart starts beating even faster.

“Wow, I was not expecting to hear that,” he says softly, he looks down like he was just flooded with memories that were now playing through his mind. In that moment, I wanted to comfort him too. “He’s been gone for three years.” A deep furrow formed on his brow.

She nodded solemnly. “He was very fond of the pieces you did for him,” she said, calculatingly giving very little information.

Nick smiled. “He was so young when we did some of it. Fuck, he was so young when he insisted on getting a sleeve on one whole arm.” The smile faded a bit and he sighed. He shook himself and started tattooing again. “He always was an old soul. Insistent on doing what he wanted, how he wanted, when he wanted.” Nick drew a few lines of the tattoo before he asked, “How did you know him?”

She tensed for a moment. I rubbed her back softly. I was feeling every bit of the emotion in the room too. By the looks of things, I was in a room with the two people that I cared about the most. “I did not know him very well before he died,” she told a half lie. “But I just kept dreaming about the tattoo of the Moon Lady and I thought it must mean something.”

He glanced up briefly and then back to his work on her thigh. “Yeah, he dubbed her the Moon Lady,” he laughed. “I designed her special for him. I also helped him fix the mess of a sleeve he had done when he was way too young.”

“You two were close?” she asked quietly.

“He was my best friend.” Nick had a sad look on his face. “Since Noah was fifteen, we just hung out all the time. We had some good times. We actually met because he came looking for work at the tattoo parlour I was apprenticing at.”

I was listening to every word he was saying, drinking it all in.

“He had such an independent mind,” he continued. “He was playing for a band and he was so sure that music was his future, he dropped out of school and everything…”

“He dropped out at fifteen?” she asked a little shocked.

“Yeah, he was a different one,” Nick smiled. “I miss him.”

The image of the moth that Nick designed for the tattoo was slowly taking shape, her skin was red and she flinched every time he used the rough paper towel to wipe away at the ink and blood. She was in agony, I could tell.

“This is so much more painful than I ever thought it would be,” she whispered to me while we were in the bathroom. She had asked for a break. “I thought I was tougher than this.”

‘You are doing great,” I whisper back.

“I should have just asked for a coffee date or something and spilled the beans right away,” she was splashing herself with cold water, rubbing her neck.

“You are doing fine,” I insist.

“I really am not, Noah,” she huffs. She stares at me for full minute. “Are you fine?” she asks.

“No,” I answer simply. She takes a step closer and goes down on her knees in front of me where I am sitting on the closed toilet. She takes my hands.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“I feel like I can remember something as soon as he says it. Like he is filling in pieces of a puzzle,” I try to explain. “I want to hug him. Is that silly?”

“No,” she says.

“I don’t like seeing you in pain.”

“It’s my own fault.”

“Maybe you went too big for the first tattoo.”

“Maybe. But everyone always says you should go bigger than you think.”

We kiss there by the toilet in the black and white bathroom, comforting each other as much as we can.

15. You

You go back out and smile and grit your teeth through the last end of the shading done on the moth, but you also bite back tears. The whole thing is too much. You are in so much physical pain you are struggling to cope, your heart is going through all the emotions of learning more about Noah. You are also so worried about him and how he might take any news that comes out of this. You are all over the place.

“Tell me more about him,” you prompt.

“He was very private. Only really shared his secrets with the people he was closest to. I don’t remember him ever mentioning you,” Nick’s voice was still soft and kind.

“I’m not trying to pry,” you quickly explain. “I guess I just wish I had the chance to know him before…”

“That accident was tragic,” Nick said. “I could not believe the news when I heard. I was even waiting for him to pat me on the shoulder at his own funeral I was in denial so bad.”

“Slippery roads in the rain, right?” you add.

“Yeah,” Nick nodded. “But he must have been speeding. Noah was always a very responsible driver. You know, especially after what happened when he was young. When his dad died. He always had respect for the rules, he knew the consequences for being reckless too well. I wish I knew what had happened. Wish I could talk to him again.”

“Do you think something was suspicious?” you ask.

“Sometimes,” Nick sighs. “But I have made peace with the fact that I will never know.”

“Accidents can happen so quickly,” you try to comfort. “I just always hope that he was at peace. That it was quick. That he didn’t suffer.” Once the words were out of your mouth you realise how hard you really did hope that. How much it haunted you that Noah went through a death. You also realise that you have never said this to Noah, because you feel how he rests his head against your shoulder. You want to turn and hug him, hold him.

“God, I hope so too,” Nick says, his voice small. “From the police report it sounds like that it was quick. His injuries were severe.” He stops tattooing for a moment to lean back so that he was looking at the ceiling. Your heart was breaking for both these men.

“I’m sorry,” is all you can think to say.

“If I cry now, I will have to resanitise everything,” he tries to chuckle. He takes a deep breath and continues to tattoo.

You bite back tears yourself, blinking as quickly as you can. You can’t think of what else to say.

“You haven’t said how you know Noah,” he said.

You notice the present tense. “Him and I were talking online. For a few months,” you lie quickly. Knowing that the truth would not go over well at all at his moment. “I had a great time talking to him. It was texts only.” You had to account for your limited knowledge.

“Oh,” Nick says nodding.

You do not say anything again.

You drive back to the guest house, your leg wrapped in cling wrap, taped at the edges, Noah’s hand resting just above the tape. You feel like both of you are hanging by a thin thread and you are quiet all the way. He rubs your thigh comfortingly. You squeeze his fingers back.

As soon as you close the door of the guest house behind you, you and Noah are in each other’s arms, clinging to each other and within seconds of that you start crying, chest heaving for air and then Noah is crying too, burying his face in your neck, his breath hot.

You take his hand after a while and guide him to the couch, where you lie down and he lays next to you on your good leg’s side, his head on your chest. You both cry for a while longer while running your fingers through his hair and rubbing his back.

“I feel like I miss him so bad,” Noah says later his voice thick. You kiss his hair. “The connection I felt was insane.”

“He was very kind,” you say.

“I wanted to speak to him and tell him I’m okay,” he sounds defeated.

“We can make a plan,” you reassure him. After a while you whisper your suggestion, knowing it was not great. “We can write him a letter?”

Noah reaches over and pulls up your skirt to expose the tattoo and he lifts his head to look. He absent-mindedly starts picking at the tape around the edges.

“I need to let him know,” he says. “Can we write the letter now? How’s your leg?”

“My leg is fine,” you say. You get up to get your bag and dig out a notebook and a pen. “How do you want to do this? How honest are we going to be?”

Dear Nick

I felt the need to clarify a few things. I had no idea how to say these things to you yesterday. I felt like saying it would be disrespectful to you in a way, because I had no idea if you would believe me. I did not want you to feel like I was playing with your emotions.

I lied. I did not exchange texts with Noah. He appears to me. He says he has been appearing for years, but I have only been able to notice for a few months now. His ghost, or soul, or presence or essence, I don’t know. I know that is crazy. So does he. But it is true and I don’t know what to tell you about it. He cannot remember a lot of things; he is unclear on a lot of his past and I came to you to try and get some extra information.

I felt in the moment that it would be insensitive to tell you this, because then you had to respond to me – and how is anyone supposed to respond??

Noah was with me yesterday during our session. He asked me to say the following in the letter: He cannot remember you as well as he wishes, but that he does remember that you were a person that made him feel seen and safe. He knows that he loved you dearly. He was also so adamant to let you know that he was okay.

I am leaving town, I have a long drive home, but should you wish to contact me I will leave my contact details at the end. I will also have breakfast at the restaurant on the corner from your shop, should you wish to talk to me in person.

Thank you for doing a great job on the tattoo.

Thank you for being so important to Noah when he needed you.

Kindest regards

16. Noah

I carefully pealed the cling wrap and tape from her leg and then with great care put on an ointment that Nick had suggested. This morning when we woke up the skin was not red anymore and the tattoo looked great almost no scabbing. It was beautiful. I had a viscerally emotional response to it, seeing my friend’s work on her thigh.

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

“No, just sensitive,” she smiles at me.

We returned to the shop after writing the letter and left it under the wiper blade of his car, we decided that we really did not want to make him uncomfortable and force him into a situation he had no choice being in.

I was so nervous about breakfast, having no idea what to expect. I could tell she was too. She seemed calmer, the adrenaline of the pain from being tattooed out of her system. I think it contributed to her emotional response the previous day. But I still felt nauseous with the need to connect with Nick and it was truly strange.

When the car was packed and we double checked the bathroom for anything we might have left behind, we quietly drove to the restaurant. She picked a table at the back, a little secluded but sat in a spot where she could see the door, should he decide to show up.

She ordered coffee. I had my hand on her thigh. She had pulled the skirt up to expose the tattoo, to get relief from the material touching the sensitive skin. I traced the outline gently. I could tell she wanted to talk, she was crawling in her own skin again, fidgeting with a straw wrapper that was on the table. The coffee came and she slowly sipped at it.

“I’m not even hungry,” she whispers. But we need to kill time. So, she ordered something, just so we could stay a little longer.

“If he doesn’t show,” I say, sighing, “It’s okay. This was never a guaranteed success anyway.”

“Yeah,” she sounds defeated. I love her for helping me with this. I want to tell her but instead I kiss her cheek and she gives me a weak smile.

And then Nick walks through the door.

She stands immediately, waving him over.

He did not smile. He just walked over, his hands buried deep in his pockets and he looked everywhere except at her. He seemed like he had had no sleep. He slides into the seat opposite her still looking away.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” he answers.

The waiter shows up and takes his order for orange juice.

“You need to explain that letter you left me,” he says looking her in the eye for the first time. “It was messing with me all night.”

She nods. “I know that what I said is crazy. I am aware. But it is true. I don’t have an explanation of how it is possible. I am not a psychic or any of that shit.”

“How do you communicate with him?” he asks.

“You believe me?”

“I did not say that.”

She grimaces, but steels herself before she begins. “At first it was small things, like sounds I heard in my house, things not where I left them, touches, whispers. For a very long time, I was convinced that it was my mind playing tricks on me. But eventually, he was more in control of himself and we could start talking and he could touch me. It got to the point where I had to accept it regardless of how I felt. He became a comforting presence to me.”

Nick was quiet for a moment absorbing what she said. “You said he couldn’t remember much?”

“No, he can’t. So, I starting having dreams, like he was giving them to me. I dreamt of you one night, giving him the Moon Lady tattoo and it was so real, the details the way you two were joking around. Then I started to take all the clues and I started putting the puzzle together. I am not explaining this very well.” She takes a few big gulps of her coffee.

His orange juice and her breakfast arrive, they both ignore their orders.

“You said he was there yesterday?” he asks.

She simply nods.

He leans forward, holding his head in one hand. “I could have sworn that I saw him yesterday. Almost from the corner of my eye, you know. Part of why I was so emotional talking about him to you. But I was sure it was just because our conversation was about him”

Her eyes went wide. “We didn’t know whether you would be able to see him or hear him.”

“He is okay?” Nick asks his voice thick.

“Yeah,” she says.

I feel my heart clench so much it hurts. I get up and stand behind him. I make eye contact with her before I carefully place my hand on his shoulder. He tensed immediately and I felt elated that he could feel it.

“Is he…?”

“Yes,” she says.

He brings his hand up and places it over mine. “Jesus,” he says giving a nervous laugh.

“It’s just Noah,” I say quietly. He heard me. He twists around, stands and grabs at me and we hug so tight.

“This is fucking weird,” he says.

“You need to be cool, people might look,” she says, but she is beaming.

We release the hug and he awkwardly looks around, because he couldn’t see me. “I miss you,” he says.

“I miss you,” I whisper back.

He sits back down and I sit next to him. She picks up a fork and starts eating her breakfast, the tension gone from her face.

“Can you remember the crash?” Nick whispers.

17. You

You watched for about a solid hour while they spoke and caught up. The friendship that they shared was obvious to you, as they were so at ease with each other, despite the absurdity of the situation, despite the time apart, despite literal death. Noah’s eyes had a sparkle to them and it made you so happy to see. It was strange to see him interact with someone else, but it was so humanising. You said very little and were happy to just watch the two of them and absorb Noah’s laugh.

Eventually you had to leave though. Nick took you to his car where he had a box that he handed to you. “I packed this last night,” he said making eye contact with you. “I wasn’t sure I was going to give it you,” he looked down. “But I think you will both really learn a lot from it.”

You gave Nick a long, tight hug and thanked him many times. Noah and Nick hugged quickly. You promised to keep in touch.

“That was great,” Noah said his voice sad.

“That went a million times better than we ever hoped for,” you said.

“It did,” he said. “I can’t believe that he could actually feel me, that we could speak. I have never felt as real as I did when you could both hear me.” His voice grew soft at the end.

You reach over and gently take his hand, he intertwined his fingers with yours. “We will make a plan and see him again. I can absolutely see how the two of you were friends.”

“Are,” he corrects you. “We are friends.”

“Yeah,” you smile. You keep your eyes on the road, but you want to look into his eyes. You knew this was a lot to handle. “I am dying to know what’s in the box.”

“Me too,” he says.

“You open it, we have a long way to go still. Could kill some time.”

He drops a kiss to your hand before he reaches back to retrieve the shoe box. He settles it on his lap and stares at it for a while. You say nothing. He carefully lifts the lid of the box and slowly pushes it back. “Well fuck,” he breathes.

“What?” you ask, sneaking peaks at the box.

“You drive,” he points through the windscreen towards the road. “I’ll give details.”

“Okay,” you snort.

“Right so, it seems like some of my stuff,” he says. “Hang on.” He digs through the things in the box.

“Noah,” you say in frustration after a while.

“Alright, alright, biggest item is this shirt.” He takes it out and shakes it out so you could look quickly. “It is a white shirt and it has a picture of…. It looks like Jesus and the devil playing basketball.” He laughs. “That is so cool.”

“Give me,” you take it and immediately smell it. Spicy and clean. “Mmmm, smells like you.” You keep the shirt on your lap.

“Then we have a beaded necklace with a big cross on, some bracelets, a plain gold ring.” He holds each piece and waits for you to look. He studies each item with care. Taking his time with each piece. “Here’s a copy of Into the Wild,” he flips through the pages of the book.

You were speechless. These few items meant the world. It was such a generous thing of Nick to do.

“Here is a flash drive also,” he says his voice sounding almost scared.

“The laptop is behind my seat.” You feel nervous.

Again, he rummages around in the back to take out the laptop. It takes a moment for him to boot it up and settle back. “What do you think this is?”

“Probably photos,” you say.

“Why am I scared of this?”

“Because whatever it is, it was your life,” you say gently. “Take your time.”

“Can I just say thank you to you first?” he says. “Thank you for doing this. Being there for me.”

You steal a glance at him. “Of course,” you say. “I feel honoured that I am allowed to witness this.”

“I love you,” he says his voice deep. “Do you know that?”

Your heart beats faster instantly, you feel it trying to climb up through your throat. Why would he say this while you are driving? You want to stare into his eyes and hold him and comfort him. You slow the car down and pull off next to the road. He seems confused by your actions. Once the car is fully stationary, you undo your seatbelt and practically climb over to him as much as you can and you wrap your arms around his neck. You press your face into his neck and breathe in his smell. “I love you,” you whisper. He wraps his arms around you and squeezes you so tight.

You start peppering his neck in small kisses heading towards his jaw. You feel him smile and your heart swells. Kisses along his chin, his cheeks, his nose, his eyebrows. Finally, he takes your face between his large hands, his hands resting over your ears and he kisses you firmly, you feel him swallow. Then his tongue is gently at your lips and you kiss him back, opening up to him. The kiss is tender and he smiles into it and it makes you feel out of breath. When you break apart, he rests his forehead against yours for a few moments.

“Thank you for pulling the car over before doing that,” he whispers against your cheek with a giggle.

You laugh. “My pleasure.”

“Also mine,” he laughs. “But seriously, did you hear me?”

You nod, eyes locked with his. “Did you hear me?”

He nods. “I’m not even real, though. How can you love me?”

“You are more real to me than anything,” you say.

18. Noah

I insert the flash drive into the laptop. We were on the road again. She turns her head and smiles at me while I watch her drive. I see the sparkle in her eye, and the emotions she feels for me are written on her face and she shows it to me without hesitation. Never can I express how that feels – the words do not exist to explain the feeling shattering my heart and then lovingly putting each piece back in its place. My heart that does not exist either. It’s almost painful. And it’s the best feeling. I should have told her that I loved her with flowers and music and grand gestures. But I needed her to know so badly in that moment.

“Are you okay?” she asks, suddenly frowning.

“I just love you so much,” I say as explanation.

“Noah,” she smiles. “I love you, too. But is this too much for you? We can wait until we get home. We can wait as long as you want.”

I take a moment to think about it. “Honestly, I want you to be able to look with me. I don’t want you driving, I want you holding my hand when I do this.”

She reaches out her hand and I take it. “Okay,” she says. “We wait.”

I kiss her hand. “I can offer you other entertainment?”

“Oh yeah?”

“Eye spy?” I say, trying to think of other games. She laughs and I think that I live for that sound. But I do not. I exist for that sound.

“I have a better idea,” she giggles. “Go pick a playlist with older music and then we guess the song. We see how much you can remember.”

“Interesting, you want to compete with me,” I say, starting to search for playlists. “If it is a banger, we play it through and see who knows the most lyrics.”

She nods with a big smile. She has my shirt wrapped around her neck like a scarf, she keeps smelling it.

We play the game and she drives. We sing along to songs, laugh when we get it wrong. We argue about which songs qualify as bangers. I feed her dried apples and sips of water. I watch as she walks to the bathroom when we stop for a break and she adds a desperate running step because she couldn’t wait any longer. She comes back with marshmallows and a coffee.

We got home and we unloaded the car with heavy limbs. She kept stretching and rubbing her butt, saying that she sat it completely flat. I assured her it was just as delicious as it was before.

As I stood under the spray of water from the shower head and I felt the water pelt my skin, the water droplets running down my body, I wonder if I really feel it, or whether I was just so in the moment, so desperate that I made it real in my head. I wish there were a rule book and that I could understand. But then I shake myself and decide that I should stop wasting my time on wondering. Enjoy the warmth of the water while you can feel it, Noah. Let yourself feel cleansed by the soap, Noah. Just stop thinking so goddamn much.

When I enter the bedroom, she is under the covers, pillows arranged how she likes it, her eyes gently closed. She must be tired. Ambient light is all that covers the room in a soft, warm glow.

I lift the covers and settle behind her, inching my way closer and closer until I was right up against her body and I put my arm around her waist and I put my face in her neck. “Hey, baby.”

She hums in response, her head tilting to allow me more access to her neck. I kiss her neck repeatedly and slowly and go up her jaw.

“You still awake?” I ask eventually.

“I am,” she whispers. She sounds slightly out of breath. She squirms and, in the process, pushes her butt back against me and I gasp in response. The sensation sends shivers down my spine and makes me achingly aware of my groin.

I take a deep breath to calm myself down a little. My hand goes under the shirt she is wearing and I feel her bare skin, soft and smooth. “Is this okay?” I ask.

“Yes,” she breathes.

I run my fingers over her waist with light touches, slowly working my way higher until I can feel the flesh of her breasts and then I take my time touching, squeezing and holding them. I feel her hardened nipples against my palm and I drink in every heavy breath she takes and releases. Her hips ever so slightly pushing back against me consistently. “My god,” I moan in her ear. “These are so perfect.” I kiss and suck at her neck. Rational thought was leaving me rapidly. “Come here,” I pant and I make room for her to turn onto her back and then I immediately lean in and over her and kiss her. My hand is still palming her breast.

She kisses me back with so much passion that I am overwhelmed for a few seconds. She has her hands on my shoulders, rubbing along them softly, in contrast with the way her tongue is running along my lips with fervour. “Noah,” she says.

‘Yes, baby?”

“Please, Noah.”

“What do you want? Tell me?” I pull back and make eye contact with her, making sure I hear what she is about to say.

“I need you,” she sobs almost. I have to kiss her solidly before I pull back again.

“What do you need?”

“You, all of you,” she says, her leg hooking around mine and she runs her hands down my back, lower and lower. “I need to feel your skin against mine.”

“Alright,” I nod and I push her shirt up and she lifts her shoulders just enough that I get it off and I slowly drag the shirt down her arms and then she is bare and I cannot breathe. I immediately lower my mouth and kiss a line between her breasts before I kiss one while my hand is on the other. I lick around her nipple, my tongue leaving shiny wet spots in its wake. I glance up and her head is thrown back, her eyes closed. “Hey,” I whisper to her and she looks down. “Keep your eyes on me,” I say. I flatten my tongue and glide it across the hardened bud of her nipple and she moans, then I bite down very softly and she grabs my hair.

“Can I take off your underwear?” I say locking eyes with her. She bites her lip and nods. I move my body and move the blankets so I can reach her and I trail my fingers down her stomach and to her hips, and I slide my finger under the elastic and pull them down her hips. “Lift,” I say and I grip it and drag it down and she lifts her legs up so can remove them more easily. I look at her to make sure she was still okay with all of this, and I see she is nervous. But her eyes also look at me with dark hunger. “You still okay with this?”

“I am,” she squeaks.

“You sure?” I say, standing up on my knees on the bed. She nods. “I am going to ask you to open these legs for me, love. Are you okay with that?” I say this sternly. I need her to understand that my intentions were far from pure. She looks me in my eyes and I see her swallow heavily.

“I am so sure,” she whimpers.

Relief and arousal floods through me at the same time. “Thank fuck,” I breathe and then, “Open.” I grab one ankle and help to place it far away from the other and I maneuver both of us so there’s a bit more space for me and I settle down between her legs. I could already see her arousal glistening in the faint light. Salivating, I kiss her soft inner thighs and hook my one arm around her upper thigh, holding her in place. Then I take a finger, the same finger that has already been inside of her, and run it up and down spreading her arousal. She responds by squirming a little, she is biting her lip. I use my hand to spread her open slightly and then I press my tongue to her and I am overcome with her taste and emotions and the feeling of my cock becoming even harder. I lick up to her clit and then gently suck on it and she bucks her hips, and I feel victorious. “You taste so good,” I say. I drag my tongue down and it sinks into her wet mess at her opening and I drink her in. “So very wet,” I say as I suck on her again.

Her hips start to move, it seems, of their own accord and she lets out little moans and she reaches down and grabs my hair. I am so into that. “Noah, oh my god,” she cries. I feel like a god between her legs.

“You want my fingers?” I ask.

“Yes.” No hesitation.

I slowly and carefully push two fingers into her and I hold my breath as I feel her insides clench around them. I pump them in and out of her slowly and curl my fingers and she is moaning, and just like the previous time she tries to close her legs but my body is in the way. “Baby, take my hand,” I reach my free hand up and she takes it and grips it. “Is it too much?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she moans, “It feels so good.”

“Grip my hand tighter when it gets too much. I need you to hold on for me,” I look her in the eye. “I am going to keep going, okay?”

She nods and I pump my fingers again and then I lower my mouth and lick over her clit and when I feel her hips move and her grip on my hand tighten, I lick faster and harder and I keep going until she tells me that she is going to come and I keep going. Her hips lose rhythm and I look up at her and watch her utter beauty as she comes apart against my mouth. She brings her free hand up and clamps it over her mouth and I still hear her cries.

When she stills, I remove my fingers from her and climb up towards her so I can kiss her. She is breathing heavily, so am I. I kiss her tenderly, and she responds eagerly, her hands traveling all over my arms, shoulders and back. “I don’t know how this will work,” I say as I dare to look down at myself. “But can I please, please fuck you?” I bury my face in her neck, I have to concentrate to not just mindlessly rub against any part of her.

She pulls back from me and hold my face between her hands and she looks in my eyes for a moment, looking back and forth between my eyes. Love radiates from her and she pulls my face down to kiss my nose. “What do you need from me?” she whispers.

“I need to be inside you, as soon as I can possibly manage,” I smile at her.

“What did you mean you don’t know how it works?” she says looking concerned.

“I just mean because I am a spirit. A ghost. I don’t know. But, honestly, the boner feels very, very real to me.”

“Yeah?” she asks and her hand is feeling me over the boxer briefs I have on. I have to squeeze my eyes shut and breathe through the feeling. “Feels real to me too. Hang on.” She lifts up slightly and pushes the briefs down a bit so I am free from the constraint. She wraps her hand around me slowly and pumps up and down a few times excruciatingly slow. She lets go and her index finger teasingly swipes up the bead of pre-come from my tip and she sucks it off of her finger and if I was not already dead….

“Christ!”

“Definitely real,” she giggles. “Fuck, I didn’t expect you to taste that good,” her face suddenly serious.

“Um, thank you, baby, but we do not have time for you to taste more,” I say quickly. “I am already about to explode and I haven’t even been near to being inside of you.”

She lifts up and kisses me again. She is sloppy this time, running her tongue along my bottom lip. “I don’t mind waiting,” she whispers.

“Lay back,” I tell her and she keeps looking at my face with such adoration. I rip the briefs off and then I take a hold of myself and run my cock up and down her a few times, across her clit spreading the wetness a bit, she throws her arms up above her head and sighs loudly. “You ready? I’ll go nice and slow.”

“I’m ready,” and she wraps her legs around my hips trying to encourage me closer.

I slowly and carefully push past the resistance at her entrance and keep going until I am completely buried inside the heat and clenching wetness. I literally could not breathe. I fall forward on top of her, my elbows trying to keep some of my weight off her. Her arms wrap around me immediately, her thighs gripping me and she peppers my face with kisses while I struggle to inhale. “You are fucking perfect,” I manage to get out. “Perfect.” She started squirming under me. “Please,” I choke out. “Wait a second. I need to calm down.”

She patiently rubs my shoulders while she licks at my neck. “I love you,” she whispers in my ear.

“I love you,” I sob into her skin.

She soothingly rubs my back and I hear her take a deep breath near my ear and then she exhales slowly and then deep breath in again and without a word, I join her breathing and then I start feeling like I have a bit of control back. So, I start moving just a little and work up to a steady rhythm and she opens her legs wider and clings to my arms. “You feel so good,” she gasps and I cannot believe that this is real, and I have to tell myself that I had better not start overthinking.

I lift myself up a bit so can have more leverage and I look down at her face contorted with pleasure, her body beneath me, the body that I have been looking at for years, never dreaming this would be possible, the body that I knew I was lucky to just be able to briefly touch in a moment of realness and here it was – gorgeous and writhing with me deeply inside of it. I fuck her harder and slightly faster and I hear the slap of skin on skin. She cries out and swears and moans. And this, I think, could not possible feel any better if I had been alive. Suddenly, she makes eye contact with me and she nods with very small movements and her hand sneaks down between us and she touches herself. “Fuck, baby that’s so hot,” I say to her. “I am not going to last much longer.”

“Please,” she says and she tries to sit up and reaches up for me, so I lower myself down so I can kiss her and she kisses me. “I am coming,” she says. I grab her hand and we kind of lose control at the same time and I still most of my movements and she is twitching and gripping me so tight and it lasts so long. She bites my shoulder and then licks it to sooth the bite. I stay inside her and collapse and our breaths are hot and heavy.

“Baby, just let me stay inside a little longer,” I say because I am so sensitive. She jolts every few seconds as aftershocks go through her. “I love you,” I tell her again because I need her to know so badly. How much she means to me. “I love you.”

“I love you so much,” she rubs my shoulders again and then starts running her fingers over my back lightly scratching. Goosebumps form over my whole body.

“I don’t need heaven, ever,” I whisper in her ear. “I have already found mine.”

19. You

You wake up and you smell him, your face resting against his shoulder blade, your naked body curled up around his, his back to you, your arm around his waist and you are holding on to him like your life depended on it. When you open your eyes, you realise that your breasts are pressed up against Jesus’ face on his back and you cannot help but smile at that.

For a long time, you just admire his broad shoulders with a dusting of freckles where the tattoos do not cover his skin. You look at where he has slept his hair into standing at odd angles. You listen to him breathe, slow and even with a slight whistle when he inhales through his nose. When you move your feet a little, you feel the course hair on his legs. Every single part of him was so absurdly perfect. Except when your brain starts thinking, again, that he is dead. You press your hand to his chest, press it firmly. You do not feel a heartbeat.

When he stirs a while later, he turns to face you with a dopey smile on his face. His face is slightly swollen from sleep, his lips are puffy. His lips are a part of him that you have been greatly underappreciating. They are just so kissable. His eyes are squinted almost shut. Beautiful.

“Hey,” he croaks and moves closer so he can hold you, his long arms wrapping around you and his mouth resting against your forehead. “How are you doing?”

“Mmm, I feel great,” you say. “And you?”

“Oh, I am so very good and great and relaxed and wonderful,” he smiles against your face.

You laugh and kiss his chin. “You are so warm,” you say as you snuggle closer.

“And you smell amazing. You always do in the mornings.”

“You smell me in the mornings?”

“Absolutely, I do,” he says and drags his nose along your face until its buried in your hair.

You lay in comfortable silence and almost fall back asleep when he says, “That flash drive is haunting me.”

“Shall I go get it?” you ask. You have thought about it, but there have also been many other things on your mind. The way he kept calling you baby the previous evening being one of the things.

“I will, I’m just nervous still.”

“I have to go to the bathroom anyway. And I am ready to hold your hand. But if you want to wait, that is also fine, you know that.”

“Okay,” he says apprehensively. You search and find your shirt that was flung off you and pulled it over your head. “Leave the underwear,” he says pouting at you.

You make sure to pull the shirt down as low as it would go when you leave to the bathroom first, and then to go find that laptop where the flash drive is still inserted.

Noah is already sitting up and he has arranged the pillows for you both to be comfy. You climb in get under the covers and scoot closer and you place the laptop on both your laps. “You do it,” he says.

“Okay,” you run your finger along the mousepad and click to open the folder. Inside are photos, videos and audio files. You just know that whatever you are about to see is going to make you cry. He wraps his arm around your shoulder. “We can stop whenever you want. Where do you want to start?”

“Photos.”

You click and then you start clicking through the album and it was already a lot to handle. Many photos of Noah with friends, you only recognise Nick. Photos of Noah where he was so young. Photos with his skin in varying stages of being tattooed. His hair in different styles. There many photos of him making silly faces, many with him holding musical instruments, many with animals.

Noah was quiet for the most part, only commenting occasionally. “Is that a dermal piercing?”

“It looks like,” you smile.

The two of you can only guess at the other people. Noah tells you that some of the people look familiar, but he could not really place them.

So, then you go over to videos.

Videos were mostly of him hanging out with his friends, making jokes, being silly, drinking, making music. Many videos of Noah singing, some, where was very young, singing songs, clearly still finding his feet. But as Noah ages in the videos his talent becomes more and more pronounced. His voice improving, the songs improving. Videos of him playing guitar, playing keyboard, making music on the computer.

Noah would hide his face with some videos and with others, he would nod his head along with the sounds. You loved the insight this gave. The details neither of you would have ever known.

Until the video that started playing was a slideshow.

Noah gripped your hand slightly tighter and you squeezed back as images cycled with a Matchbox Twenty song playing. Tears were rolling down your face silently as you couldn’t help but imagine being at the funeral, knowing that you have lost this man. At the same time, you know that it happened.

Noah eventually stopped the video when he could not take it anymore. His head dropped down and you moved closer. He turned and buried his face in your neck and you held him as close as you could manage. A few sobs shook his body and then you couldn’t hold it back anymore either. You could guess what he was feeling. He didn’t have to say anything. The loss of everyone he knew, the life he knew and mostly himself. This life that he could not really remember.

He fell asleep after a while, you running your fingers through his hair slowly.

Later he softly kissed your neck and whispers, “How do you think we would have met?”

You think for a moment before you say, “Me getting a tattoo and you coming by to visit Nick. Or maybe at a concert, in the crowd.”

“By the looks of how rowdy my friends and I seemed to get, you could have been a neighbour that complained about the noise,” he adds.

“Maybe just at the grocery store, I would have been checking you out for sure.”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Definitely.”

“We could have both been hiding from people in a social situation,” he grips your hand.

“Oh, I can see that,” you smile.

“We will never know, and that kills me,” he whispers.

You resist making a comment about that. “But we did meet. It might not have been the way it should have happened, but you found me regardless.”

“That is true,” he takes a few breaths. “I would have been staring at you too, by the way. In the grocery store.”

“Thanks,” you laugh.

20. Noah

The thought plagues me non-stop. I don’t want to think it, I actively try not to, but just keeps coming up. For days and days when I am with her, when I am not, I keep wondering. I try to leave her alone a little bit, to see if it goes away. But it doesn’t.

“Noah,” she calls out into the living room. She is reading a book on the couch, but she looks up and keeps searching for me.

Maybe now is the time to bring it up. I walk closer and reach out my hand to her and she takes it. She moves over and I sit next to her.

“Are you okay?” she asks it very quietly. She knows something is eating me. Then new thoughts about how well she knows me crashes around in my head and I don’t know what I even want to say. “Something is bothering you,” she states. “Did I do something wrong?”

My heart breaks. “No,” I kiss the back of her hand. “But I have been thinking about something lately and I have to just tell you.”

She just nods. Her mouth is already turning down slightly, her eyes jumping back and forth between mine. I take both her hands in mine and turn towards her more. I can hear her take a breath and hold it. I look down at her knees.

“I am terrified that I am keeping you from living your life,” I say, still looking down. She says nothing. “What if you should be having a moment meeting a real live human being you should be dating? What if you spend too much time with me and you miss the life you should be living?”

She still keeps quiet, I can hear her breathing has picked up, but I cannot bring myself to look at her.

“I am sure you are my soulmate,” I carry on. “But maybe I am not yours. Maybe we never would have met, maybe I just died and you have another soulmate out there waiting for you.”

“What are you saying?” she finally speaks. Her voice is small.

“I don’t want to selfishly hold you back,” I say.

Tears splash down onto her arms and our hands and I look. Her bottom lip is trembling and a steady stream of tears are running down her face. “This sounds like you are saying you don’t want to be here with me anymore.”

“It’s not about what I want,” I try.

“It is, though,” she states.

“I want what is best for you.”

“And you don’t think that it’s you?”

“I am considering the possibility,” I whisper.

“Have I given you any indication that I need more than you?”

I keep quiet this time. I am hurting her and it was not my intention.

She cries audibly and I hear her breath catch and feel her shake. “Do you want to leave?” she asks simply.

“No,” I start.

“Noah,” she interrupts me. “Don’t bullshit me right now. Tell me the hard truth. Do you want to leave?”

I take a moment to think how to phrase this. “With my whole heart, I want to be with you.”

“Okay,” she wipes her tears and takes a shaky breath. “Here are my thoughts,” and she touches my cheek until I make eye contact and then drops her hand. Her stare is intense and the tears are threatening. “You do not get to choose for me. It’s that simple.

You make decisions about what you want and I make decisions about what I want.” She waits for it to sink into my head. “I need you to stop being noble, or whatever, and just understand that I can tell you to fuck off if I want to.”

I nod. “Alright.”

“If I am your soulmate, you are mine. I know the situation is not ideal. I know it’s weird and neither of us know how this works. But I love you. And fuck you for saying all that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know what you meant,” she says, “And I need you to trust me. Trust that I will be honest with you if I need something to change. Do you think I haven’t thought about these things? That maybe I am holding you back from heaven or some shit?”

“You are heaven,” I smile.

“Shut up, Noah,” she whispers. “All I know is we have this, whatever it is. I know I love you and I know that I choose you over all things living. It hurts me that you think I would be better off with someone else. That I need to go look for someone that isn’t you.”

“It kills me to think that,” I say quickly. “I hate the thought.”

“So, stop it,” she says taking my face in her hands. “Stop trying to fix everything. Stop thinking so much. This is immensely fucked up, but it is our fucked up and we get to make it of it what we choose.”

I smile at her. I place my hands over hers. She kisses me quickly. “You are too wise.”

“You need to stop letting these thoughts fester and then run away with you.”

“I realise I can overthink sometimes,” I sigh.

‘You think?” she wasn’t even smiling.

21. You

You gasp awake, immediately trying to sit up, your breath hitching as pain ripped through your chest. It felt like you couldn’t inhale as the images of your dream is all you can see. Your limbs tangle in the blankets and the darkness has you confused.

“Shhhhh,” he says next you as he tries to get a hold of you, but you thrash against him and you have an overwhelming feeling that you needed to run, get away. Then you hear the sob tear through your throat. “Hey, it’s alright.”

He is persistent in his efforts to touch you, tether you to reality. Despite your violent movements, he gets a grip on you and he gently pulls you closer. Slowly, with your body fighting with all its might, you give in and allow him.

You begin to realise that it was a dream. A terrible dream, but it still hurt so bad. It still felt real. You felt the rain on your body, how the water drenched through your clothes, how it weighed down your hair that stuck to your neck and forehead. You could smell the fuel, the wind blowing, and the smell of tyres that had been desperately braked too hard. You saw the puddles of water and how the lights reflected in it. But most horrifically you saw him, your Noah, trapped in a car. His head was limply hanging against his chest, blood running down his brow. You walk closer and try to open the door of the car to get to him, but your hands to through the door like you were a ghost. You see inside that his arm was clearly broken and that his body was strangely close to the steering wheel where the airbag had deflated. His body looked wrong, broken. He was unsuccessfully trying to take a breath, with weak, jerky movements. You watched him die. Watched as the little bit of life drained out of him and he went still.

The horror and desperation were all that you could begin to process. You would give anything, absolutely anything, to turn back time, to replace your body with his. You wanted to scream to whoever was listening that they could have whatever they wanted, if you could save him. You wanted to climb into the car and fix him, you wanted to climb in and join him. Your entire being wanted to correct this mistake.

“Is it a bad dream?” his voice says next to you.

You cling to him with all your might, your sobs now so heavy that you could not talk or explain or breathe.

He rubs your back, holds you back and whispers in your ear that everything is alright, that he is there when you are ready to tell him. He soothingly hushes you.

You could not even feel relief that he was there, that it was him that was right there. Because you knew that what you dreamt was what happened. This beautiful soul that was comforting you, had really died right there, his chest crushed during the impact. But you weren’t there to help or even witness it. He had been all alone. Your heart was broken, because you would have endured all of that if it meant that he not been alone. You would have died right next to him if you could.

After what felt like hours, the sobs had stopped, but the tears still ran down your cheeks and into his shirt. Your face felt hot and swollen. “Do you want to know how you died?”

So, you tell him as gently as you could. He was quiet while he was stroking your hair, listening to the whole story without a word.

“I don’t remember any of this,” he says his voice small and very soft. “But,” he swallows. “I do remember feeling calm when I died. I have no memory of what happened to my body, but I remember that I didn’t feel alone, or scared. It felt like someone was there to help me through it.”

“Like God?” you ask.

He was quiet again for a very long time. “Maybe it was you.”

You look up at his face in confusion.

“How could you have known what happened if I can’t even remember it now? Maybe your soul was there with me. Looking after me and helping me die. Maybe our souls have been entwined for a lot longer than we thought.”

You did not know what to make of what he said. But you liked the idea that even if you couldn’t save him, you were there for him in a way.

“I wish I could have saved you,” you croak.

“You did, love.”

[End]

WARNINGS: Some subspace, rough sex, pain-play, throat training, PIV, oral. (let me know if I need to add something.)

Tuesday:

‘Did you get your stitches out?’ you ask him when he shows up Tuesday evening.

‘I did,’ he said lifting his shirt immediately to show you.

‘Did it hurt?’ you ask.

‘No,’ he smiles.

You bend down and see the little marks.  ‘Your skin looks a little irritated.’

‘Yeah, the doctor said it’s the glue on the bandages,’ he said.  ‘It’ll go away.’

You very carefully touch his skin around one of the cuts.  ‘Looks like you’ve healed well so far.’

‘I think so,’ he says.

When you look up, he is smiling at you and holding his shirt up for you.  ‘Okay, I’m done looking.’

‘Let’s eat, I’m so hungry.’

‘You always say you’re so hungry and then you hardly eat before you are full,’ you tease.

‘That’s not true,’ he replies sounding offended.

When you finished eating, you made Noah lie down on your bed.  ‘I have something that could help with the irritation?’

‘Yeah sure,’ he says, relaxing back spreading his arms out wide.

You grab some tissue oil from your bedside table.  ‘Hang on I think some cotton wool would work well,’ you say as you grab some from the bathroom.

‘Do you need me to be naked for this part?’ he calls after you.

You laugh when you reply.  ‘It’s not strictly needed no, but if you feel that it’s necessary I won’t complain.’

‘I was just teasing,’ he says as he lifts his shirt to expose his stomach. 

For the first time you look closely at the small scars that were carefully placed on pieces of skin without tattoos.  The little cuts and marks where the stitches were pinker than the surrounding skin.  You put some of the oil on the cotton wool and very carefully wipe repeatedly over the first scar to remove any remaining stickiness from the glue.  He sighs softly.

‘They have healed really well,’ you mention again. 

‘Doctor was happy,’ he almost whispers.  ‘The scars will fade a bit, I think.’

‘I think so,’ you agree.   Wherever the oil touches his skin, the tattoos look brighter.  He has his eyes closed.  He seems so enjoy it, so once you’ve finished all three scars, you keep going, just paying attention to small patches of skin at a time. 

‘Can I make a sappy confession?’ he asks.

You glance up at his face and he is looking at the ceiling.  ‘Of course you can.’

‘I love it when you do things like this,’ he says almost with some shyness in his voice.

‘I’ve noticed,’ you say back. 

‘Yeah?’

‘Also, when I play with your hair,’ you say, almost with caution, not wanting to point something out and then break the spell of it.

‘Mmm,’ he hums.  ‘I really like that.’

‘I love the way you calm down and almost melt when I do it,’ you confess in turn.

When he speaks, you hear emotion in his voice.  ‘It makes me feel taken care of.’

Your heart breaks and you have to try and hold back your own emotions.  ‘I love taking care of you.’

‘You remember when you said you feel the safest when we’re together?’ he says hesitantly.  ‘I know it was in the heat of the moment, but, I don’t know.  I hope it’s true.’

You vividly remember saying it.  ‘It is true.’

He reaches a hand down to grab one of yours without taking his eyes off the ceiling.  ‘I feel safe with you too.  I feel welcome.’

You grip his hand and lift it to your lips.  ‘You are welcome, Noah.  So incredibly welcome.’

‘Thank you, baby,’ he says finally looking at you. 

‘Always,’ you reply.

He blinks a few times.  ‘So, you say I’m going to be okay?’ he gestures to the scars.

You give him a small smile.  ‘You are going to live,’ you nod.

‘It already feels less itchy,’ he says sounding impressed.

‘Oh good,’ you say.  ‘Look how pretty the oil makes your tattoos look.’

He peaks down.  ‘You can oil me up as much as you want.  I’m having a good time.’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ you reply.

Friday:

As Noah’s cock slips into your throat, you fight to resist the gag reflex.  The way he is fighting himself to keep still, the way he moans – it makes you want to try so much harder.  You wanted to make him proud. 

You felt the fuzzy feeling settling down over you as you feel his hand on your head where he holds you down just for a second or two.   

‘That is my girl,’ he grunts out.  ‘You are taking me so well.’

With every word of encouragement, every word of possessive praise, every time you manage to get to the base of his length, your mind quiets down.  All that exists is Noah and the sensations he makes you feel. 

‘Do you know why we are using your throat, Peach?’ he asks.

‘No?’ you say, while you catch your breath.

‘Sending me those photos of your edged pussy,’ he says his voice low.  ‘I was working, I was busy working with Jolly and I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the day.’

‘You asked me to send those, though,’ you say.

‘I know I did,’ he winks at you.  ‘Still, I think you deserve to be reminded what it does to me when you listen to instructions.  And what even thinking about your pussy does to me.’

‘Okay, I don’t mind being reminded,’ you tease just a little. 

‘Remind you that you are mine to use,’ he says. 

You nod in agreement.

You go back and take him deep again.  He thrusts up into your mouth involuntarily once, but his hand it not pushing you down anymore so it’s a compromise that works.  You take him a few more times, taking breaks in between to calm down and breathe.  Noah never pushing further than you can handle.    

‘I’m sorry, Peach, we need to stop,’ he strokes your hair as he eases you back.  ‘I don’t want to cum yet.’

‘Okay,’ you say, ready to agree with whatever he wants. 

‘Can you show me how wet you are?’ he asks with small look of concentration on his face. 

‘Yes,’ you say, reaching down and slipping two fingers past your underwear. 

‘So wet,’ he says with desperation in his voice.  ‘Do you really enjoy my cock in your throat that much?’

‘Yes, sir, I do,’ you say with just the slightest feeling of shame.  He told you to use ‘sir’ when it felt right.  When you have reached that state of mind.

You see in his reaction that he took note.  ‘Take off your underwear,’ he says so sweetly.  ‘Now go get on the bed on your knees and elbows please.’

You feel aching need when he says this and you are quick to do as you are told, trying to get comfortable.  You put a pillow under you.  Then Noah’s hands are on you, touching and gripping. 

‘Let me just taste you first,’ he says and you feel his hands on either side of you, spreading you open.  ‘The most beautiful pussy,’ he sighs and he dives in with no finesse.  Tongue and a little bit of teeth.  You try to keep still for his sake, but your hips were reacting in such an instinctual way, but Noah didn’t mind.   He went with you if you moved and moaned when his tongue could enter you again, when he could suck on your clit again until you had to squirm away.  ‘Addictive,’ he mumbles. 

With his tongue trying to get as deep as it could, his fingers going back and forth in just the right place on your clit, you cum.  You push back against his face and he happily helps you through the shaking. 

‘So good,’ he says and he disappears with the last of the tremors still in your thighs.  Before you could process you feel his cock where his mouth was a second ago.  He pushes into you quickly, going halfway, pulling out, and then sinking all the way in on the second thrust. 

You grip the sheets and you are sure you let out a gasp of surprise. 

‘Was that too much?’ he asked softly in your ear.

‘No,’ you reassure him.  You had a long discussion before the time.  You knew you were playing or pretending like he said.  You knew what was coming and while it felt overwhelming, it felt so good. 

‘Hold me right there,’ he demands.  ‘Grip me, don’t move your hips.’

‘I can’t help it,’ you say softly.

‘You can’t help it?  You are going to have to control it, baby,’ he says in a slightly harsher way he normally would, but you still felt the care in the way his hand was resting on your lower back.

‘I’m trying, I promise, sir,’ you reply, concentrating on your hips. 

He lands a surprise slap on your right butt cheek that stings immediately.  His hand soothes over the skin.  ‘Mmmm, there you just gripped me so tight,’ he says breathless.  ‘I’m going to keep spanking you until your hips stop moving, Peach.’

You felt so conflicted in your mind.  You wanted to do what he asks, but you love the sensations in your body when his large hand comes down on your flesh. 

‘Good, that’s better,’ he says.  ‘Now, I’m going to fuck you, baby.’  He leans down, you feel him across your back and then he whispers in your ear, ‘Are you sure you are still alright?’

‘I’m fine,’ you say.  ‘You can keep going.’

‘I’m going to fuck you like I don’t respect you and adore you,’ he says still whispering.  ‘But I do.’

‘I know,’ you turn your head and you kiss his lips.  A quick kiss communicating trust.

He lifts his body up and you feel his hips against the back of your thighs.  He grips onto your hips with a strong grip.  ‘I need to you use you, baby,’ he says while he stays deep inside.  ‘I need to take out my frustrations from this week.  I need to give my cock what it’s been craving all week.’  He drops a kiss on your back.  ‘I need this perfect hole.’

You push back against him. 

‘Are you holding on to your pillow?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ you manage to get out. 

He pulls out of you slowly, until just the tip is inside and he fucks you with a few shallow thrusts where it’s only the head.  When he slams himself back into you with force, everything is alive with sensation.  Your whole body reacts.  He starts a brutal rhythm of pulling out slowly and fucking himself back in, his hips crashing into you, his grip on your tightening as he uses it to pull you back onto him. 

It always does something to you when he is like this.  You manage to get out of your own mind, and just feel. 

He is growling with every thrust, you hear the physical effort he puts into each movement, trying to get himself as deep inside of you as possible. 

The feeling of him inside, opening you up so forcefully is all you end up focusing on.  It’s such a powerful feeling that you feel overwhelming emotion and you know you are crying, but it doesn’t matter because it feels too good.  You cum on his cock, and you sob into the blankets on your bed.  Sobbing from pleasure and deep emotions. 

He is near your ear again, his one hand caressing your back.  ‘Baby, are you alright?’

‘Yes,’ you cry.  ‘Please don’t stop.’

‘Are you sure?  You are crying?’ he says caringly and he kisses at your cheek. 

‘From feeling too much.  You’re not doing anything wrong.  I promise,’ you try your best to reassure him.

He starts moving again, this time setting a smoother pace.  ‘How does this feel?’

‘It feels really good,’ you say.  ‘But you can go harder.’

He picks up his pace a little, and slowly starts building up force and speed until he had you completely at his mercy again.  ‘Your pussy was made for my cock,’ he grunts.  ‘This is too perfect to be a coincidence.’

‘Please, go harder,’ you plead. 

‘I’m going pretty hard, baby,’ he says his breath hitching with his movements.

‘I want you to make it hurt,’ you say it out loud.

His hips stutter just a little.  ‘Why?’ he says sounding concerned.

You reach back and give his hand on your hip a quick squeeze.  ‘Just to make me feel more.  Everything is okay,’ you say.

You feel him relax just a little behind you.  ‘Give me both your hands,’ he instructs. 

You reach back with both and its immediately uncomfortable because you really only have your face to balance on now.  But Noah, being who he is, bends your arms across each other where he can grip onto them easily, and pulls back enough that the pressure is not on your face anymore.  Using his grip on your arms as leverage he is rough with you, completely using your body.  And it hurts.  It turns you on so much, the added level of pain, Noah’s grunts behind you, that you cum again, unable to stop a scream from tearing out of your chest.

Noah keeps going though, not even slowing down as you convulse, skin slapping loudly together.  ‘Jesus, listen to how wet you are,’ he gets out.

‘Noah, I’m going to cum again,’ you say almost afraid of how it will feel adding even more sensation on top of what you are already feeling. 

‘Cum, again.  Cum while I’m fucking the shit out you,’ he says. 

‘Please cum with me?’ you beg him, needing the connection.  ‘Please cum with me, Noah.  Inside me?’  You cannot even wait for his response, before you are hanging your head down and knowing that the only reason you are not collapsed is because Noah is holding on to you.  Involuntary spasms keep shaking your body even after the orgasm has passed, but your body was still processing it all.  You can feel that Noah has cum inside you.  His movements are slowing down until he is just slowly rocking with you. 

‘Holy fuck,’ he sighs out.  ‘Lay down baby, I’ve got you.’

You just wiggle your upper body higher up on the mattress so you could lay down with as little effort as possible.

Noah stays inside, and gently keeps fucking you.  You feel the absolute mess the both of you have made and find such comfort in him just helping you come down from that.

‘Are you alright?’ he asks, kissing at your shoulders.

‘Mmm,’ you say.  ‘Thank you, Noah, for doing that for me.’

‘Anything you want, baby,’ he says. 

‘I’m not very good at pretending,’ you admit.

He waits for you to continue, paying attention to any part of you he can reach with his mouth.

‘I didn’t dislike what we just did, but I don’t think it necessary to pretend.  You can just do whatever you want, because you want to,’ you try to explain. 

‘I understand,’ he says.  ‘I guess I feel bad for punishing you if you haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘But it’s not really a punishment, though,’ you mumble.  You really wanted to hold him back.

‘You’re right.  So, in the future, you just ask,’ he agrees. 

You wanted to praise him.  But you could not think of what to say, or how to say it in a way that didn’t sound like too much.  ‘Please, can I hold you back?’

‘Please,’ he says.  He pulls out so slowly and gently and rubs your back and kisses your neck.  Then the two of you lie down face to face, as close as you could get.  He cups your face, stroking his thumb repeatedly along your cheek.  ‘You are still crying,’ he whispers.  ‘I think I’m a little worried.’

‘It’s just some tears that won’t stop,’ you explain softly.  ‘You don’t have to worry.’

He blinks slowly.  ‘Why won’t the tears stop?’

You feel your lip tremble and the emotion push up your throat.  You think carefully before you speak.  ‘I am feeling a lot of things, and I don’t know what to do with them.’

‘You can tell me?’ he says so sincerely.

‘I don’t know how to,’ you say with a bit a humourless laugh.  ‘I can’t find the words.’

‘Mmm,’ he hums, wiping a tear from your nose.  ‘I think the same thing happens to me.’

‘Really?’ you ask.

‘Like,’ he takes a breath while he thinks.  ‘Like I am bursting with things to say, I just don’t know how to say it.’

You laugh through the tears.  ‘We need to work on our communication skills.’

‘I’m going to kiss you, will you bite my lip?’ he asks.

‘Okay,’ you say not expecting his response.

‘It’s me improving my communication skills,’ he says pointing at himself. 

‘Aaaah, I get it,’ you smile.

He kisses you and it’s messy with all the tears and he just doesn’t mind.  You wait a moment, and then take his bottom lip between your teeth gently and pull on it a little.  His hips push forward as a reaction. 

When the kiss breaks, he is smiling at you.  ‘Thank you,’ he says against your lips. 

‘Was it everything you hoped for?’ you ask smiling back. 

‘Even better than I hoped for,’ he buries his face in your neck.  ‘I’m hard again.’

‘I feel you.’

‘Should we just go have a shower?’ he asks.

‘We can if that’s what you want?’ you hold him tighter.  ‘Or we can take care of you?  Or we can just sleep?’

‘All such tempting options.’

‘I want to sleep inside you, though, if I may?’ he says, muffled against your neck.

‘Of course,’ you whisper back.

Together you head to the bathroom.  Noah gets the water running, you bring an extra towel.  You step under the warm spray of water and hold your hand out for Noah to join you.  When he steps inside, he immediately wraps his arms around you.  You rest your head against his chest and for the longest time, he just holds you, warm and safe as you watch the water run down his chest.

He eventually gets some soap and you wash each other, slowly and sweetly.  The touches are intimate and lingering.  Kisses are being placed all over with gentle pressure.   You know in that moment that you have never known a more beautiful soul.  You know that nothing you have ever experienced has come close to this feeling you have.  You highly doubt that anything in the future will ever feel like this again.

Gripping onto you again, pulling your body back against his, your back flush with his stomach, he easily pushes himself inside you.  You know he needs to keep his knees bent so that your bodies line up so you lift up on your toes.  His arms are so tight around you, his face right next to yours, where he kisses you or just rests his lips against you.  Your bodies work together to connect even deeper and to give each other pleasure.  But one thing you cannot do is separate.  Noah does not pull out, almost like he cannot bear to be away from you for even the second it will take before he can push back in.  The closeness was other-worldly. 

In a little universe that was the shower enclosure, steamed up, water coursing down entwined bodies, with not a single word uttered – one of the most impactful conversations of your life was taking place.

His hand travelled down your stomach and even lower until he could use his fingers to stimulate you.  You reached back with one hand to pull his face closer so you could kiss him, moan into his mouth, see his eyes and the way he was looking at you.

When you were cuddled together in bed, Noah inside, and just as close to you as he was in the shower, he says, ‘In one way I feel like I just said everything I needed to say.  In another way, I feel like now, I have even more to say.’

You kiss his knuckles where your hands were entwined.  ‘I understand exactly what you mean.’

Chapter 19

It almost never rains in Los Angeles. When it does, it pours. When it does, Noah feels it in every inch of his body as it seeps through the cracks in his skin and settles in his muscles, making even the deepest parts of him ache with the reminder. 

She loved the rainy days. She’d tilt her head up to the sky, close her eyes, and let the droplets gather on her eyelashes, her cheeks, her lips. He’d watch, mesmerized and soaked to the bone, but so full of love that it hurt. 

Now, as he steps outside and the rain weighs him down, he wishes he could be anywhere else. As if leaving this place would suddenly cure him of this heavy emptiness. He can’t leave. With or without her, this place is home and even though it hasn’t felt that way in far too long, he has work to do. 

Release days are always busy, full of phone calls and social media and all the things Noah has grown to hate about music. He just wanted to get it over with. To move on. But this moment is supposed to be rewarding since all of his hard work is finally coming to fruition. He’s been pouring everything, all of his pain and heartache, into this record. It’s been the only way he’s had any sort of relief from this constant pain in his chest. This is what it all leads up to. The hours spent hunched over his desk, voice raw from singing the same verse over and over and eyes stinging from the light illuminating off his monitor. This is when it's all supposed to matter, when the remorse is supposed to wash away. 

He felt it before her, before the last album cycle. The gravity of the unkindness of life is not new. In fact, it’s something Noah has grown to expect. Loss and pain are his oldest friends. He thought he outgrew them but the truth is, he never will. He only learned to live with the way that it hurts. 

As if he can still feel the ache, he absentmindedly rubs his palm over his heart and presses down, relishing in the pressure, the pain, as he walks. 

Beads of water gather in his hair, soaking the strands until they’re too heavy to hold it, causing rain to slide down his cheeks as pieces fall in front of his face. He runs a hand through it, shoving it back. It’s gotten long, curling in the back by his ears but he doesn’t care to cut it. Maybe he’ll grow it out past his shoulders and hide behind it again. 

His manager’s house stares back at him as he steps to the front door. He’s late. The song’s been out for an hour and he doesn’t feel any better, any lighter. The band was supposed to count down and celebrate together. Clink glasses, pat each other on the back. Instead, Noah drank a glass of whiskey and waited for the numbness to take over. 

His phone has been blowing up this entire time but he hasn’t checked a single notification. It doesn’t matter if his friends and team members like this song. It’s not for them. It’s not for anyone but himself. It’s a shout out into the void he has sunken into. He just hopes she’s so far removed from all of this that she doesn’t hear it. 

He runs his hands over his face, letting out a defeated sigh, lifting his head up to survey the space. The entry way opens up to a large living room with massive, plush couches and sleek furniture. It’s well decorated but still as modern and clinical as he’d expect from a man swimming in someone else’s money. He’s been here before but it feels different now. 

His own voice echoes as Bad Omens’ new song plays through an expensive sound system. It’s so clear that it makes his throat close up. He doesn’t listen to his own music anymore—except for when he’s working on it. At that point, it’s only pieces and ideas that he gets to hand off to someone else to polish. Hearing the finished production makes him nauseous. 

A heavy exhale leaves him as shrugs off his now soaked jacket and throws it on a rack with an assortment of others. 

As he turns toward the open room, Jolly steps in front of him. He’s all smiles and warmth with his hair half up in a bun and a chunky black sweater covering his frame. He pulls Noah into a hug, leaving no room for Noah to step away and refuse. 

“Took you long enough,” Jolly says, his words consumed by the alcohol in his veins. 

“Got caught up,” Noah lies, offering a half smile as he pulls away. 

Jolly studies him, his dark brown eyes softening as the realization sets in. Noah squirms, unable to handle the way it feels under his friend’s judgemental gaze. 

“Noah, there’s something—”

There’s not an inch of Noah that wants to hear this right now. It doesn’t matter what Jolly has to say. Nothing will peel the sadness from his core. He holds his hands up in surrender. 

“I’m good, man,” he interrupts.

Jolly’s brows furrow as he opens his mouth. “No man, listen—”

No, not fucking now. 

“Let’s just go celebrate, yeah?” Noah’s quick to cut him off again and he pats Jolly on the shoulder as he slips past him. 

The house is full. There are people nearly everywhere. Every face is one he recognizes, some more than others. He wasn’t in charge of the guest list and quite frankly, he doesn’t care who is here. He wouldn’t be among them if he could help it. And he won’t stay long anyway. He’ll show his face, make his rounds, and head home. Like clockwork. Like the way every day has been for as long as he can remember. 

He’s surrounded by friends and his team, by what is supposed to feel like love and yet, he is entirely alone. 

Love. A joke. One that has gone too far. 

He knows how real love is—how real it can be. But it’s just a memory. He has forgotten exactly how it feels to love and be loved. Hollow, distant. Something he grasps so desperately for but can’t quite reach. And he should be basking in it. He has everything he has ever hoped for. While success surrounds him, he fades into the background. He’s been living life with a sheet over his head, eyes covered in a thin white veil. A ghost, a specter. 

He walks into the living room, waving as people call his name. He only stops to talk to a few and he doesn’t say anything of substance. He just thanks them for coming and mindlessly answers their questions about the recording process and what comes next. 

What comes next? An endless cycle of touring and interviews and restless nights in a bus bunk that might as well be a coffin. At least being on tour gets him far away from California for long enough that he can pretend, even if only for a moment.

When no one else demands his attention, Noah finally sets off to find his bandmates and actually make this release official. He knows them well enough to know that they’re in the center of the chaos. He gently puts his hand on someone’s shoulder as he scoots past to find them. 

Sure enough, the three of them, plus bonus members like Matt and Bryan, are lounging on a plush and expensive cream colored sofa that takes up the middle of the room and curves in, inviting others to crowd around it. 

Noah scoffs and rolls his eyes at the sight. They look ridiculous, lavishing in the very same lifestyle that they grew up making fun of. 

Something settles in his chest, a content feeling. One of hope. These are his people, the family he has built from ashes. A small part of him wants to let himself have this moment with them. One by one, his eyes slide over the bodies and he relaxes more with each one. 

Until the world comes to a screech halt and he’s suddenly caught in headlights and gasping for air. 

Somebody else sits among them, leaning against the couch with a glass in hand and a presence so demanding that Noah nearly trips over himself. 

She’s here, sitting next to his bandmates, his best friends, the people she left behind. Her head tilts back as bubbly laughter leaves her red wine stained lips. She looks like she never left, like this is where she was always meant to be. She seems comfortable but Noah can see right through it to the tension in her shoulders and he knows she’d rather be anywhere but here, just like him. 

Time slows. Buzzing starts in Noah’s ears. His vision swirls before it begins to fade, darkening around the edges until she’s the only thing in sight. The very same way he has always tunnel visioned when it comes to her. 

Suddenly, he’s four years in the past, sitting in the living room of their shared home, staring at her life shoved in boxes—completely unaware of just how much of himself he was going to lose. 

God, it feels like it was just yesterday that she paced the room, hands running through her hair over and over again, eyes darting between Noah and the door. 

Since then, everything has changed. And while everyone else has told him it’s for the better, it doesn’t exactly feel that way. His band has finally made it. Sold out tours, millions of streams and listeners. and yet, fame means nothing. Numbers and success and money can only do so much. He’d gladly go back to life without it if it meant she would have stayed. 

When her laughter subsides, she looks around the room as if she’s taking stock of who else she has to fool. When those beautiful eyes meet his, Noah stops breathing. The smile on her face fades fast as she turns a pale white. How did she not realize he’d be here? This grand gesture, this big party? It’s all for him. It always is.

Nicholas and Folio turn their heads to find the culprit of her sudden change in demeanor and their own smiles wipe right off their faces. Traitors. They’ll grovel at his feet later with excuses and apologies but Noah doesn’t care. 

Just when he thinks he’s safe, he is reminded that he has only been treading water as it overflows, gulping for air but swallowing salt. 

His hands shake the same as they did that day she left and he averts his gaze to stare down at them. His fingers flex, grasping around nothing but air, but they turn to fists, knuckles white as he clenches. 

He wants to leave. In fact, he has to. He just can’t be here. He turns on his heels and heads for the closest open door. Slamming it shut, his hands blindly grip whatever is in front of him and they meet a cold surface. A cabinet, a sink. He grips it to steady himself but there’s no use. The weight is too heavy. His legs wobble as they give out, knees buckling. Pain rings through him as they hit the floor but it numbs instantly against the storm inside his mind. A strangled sob leaves his lips, one he has been holding back for so fucking long. It’s mangled and broken and pathetic but leaves him feeling more open, a step closer to weightlessness. 

There’s no need to turn on the light. Darkness will consume him all the same. His breathing is jagged, uneven, as his chest heaves. He runs a hand through his hair and pulls, welcoming the sting of pain, before both of his hands drop in front of him in defeat. 

She’s here. He doesn’t know why but she is. For the first time in four years, they’re breathing the same recycled air. And he feels like he’s going to be sick. 

“Noah?” 

Her voice echoes through the halls and barely makes it to the other side of the door but nonetheless, it rings in his ears. It’s haunting, the way it has lived in his head. Her cadence, his name rolling off her tongue with ease. Hearing it again feels so familiar, like it hasn’t been years and in fact, only hours have passed.

He opens his mouth to respond but nothing comes out as grief crawls up his throat and suffocates his voice. His eyes squeeze shut, forcing tiny little stars to take up the space where the image of her on the couch remains. It’s burned into his memory and years from now he’ll be able to recite exactly what she looked like in this moment. 

She’s older now in the same ways he is. With more years to her life, more experiences to her name. He knows she has added bodies to her tally the same way too. Haven’t they all?

In so many ways, she’s the same woman he fell in love with. Her hair is longer but it’s still the same color. She always talked about dyeing it, trying something new. It’s no surprise she never went through with it. She was always afraid of change when it didn’t pertain to Noah. There’s a few new wrinkles around her eyes but the way they brighten and sparkle is no different. Her smile still takes over her entire face. Her whole body gives way for her movements as she talks with her hands and nervously bounces her leg. Shock still changes her face into something soft and sad and far too fucking overwhelming for Noah. 

He pictured this day so many times and yet, he never realized just how pathetic he would be. Even after all this agony, he really thought he’d be able to share a room with her again. He always imagined himself pointing his chin, looking down his nose, and barely giving her anything but a cold hello. Like he would finally be above her, on the pedestal everyone else put him on. 

Instead, he’s living among the skeletons in his closet at rock fucking bottom. 

The sound of boots clacking against hardwood gets closer and rings in his ears. It stops abruptly and is instead replaced by the sound of the door shifting from the weight of someone leaning against it. 

“Noah?” 

There she is again. He sucks in a breath, trying to steady himself. There’s no use in responding. What does he even have to say? This was over before it even began. 

“I know you’re in there.” 

And she’s right. His body is slumped over on the floor of a bathroom. It's curled in on itself but only as a hollow shell, an empty frame. The rest of him is packed away in a box that she hauled away four years ago and never reopened. 

Silence. Nothing but his erratic heartbeat in his ears until her sigh slices through it. It sounds just as defeated as Noah feels. And it reminds him of the desperate breath she exhaled before she walked out their front door for the very last time.

She must want to say more. Noah swears he can feel her hesitation lingering but instead, boots clack against wood once again, slowly and for what feels like a lifetime, until the sound fades away and leaves more deafening silence. 

She’s gone, slipping through his fingers again. He never could hold on tight enough. This time, he didn’t even try. 

It’s funny how history repeats itself. How even after all this change, Noah can so easily be reduced down to nothing. Maybe she’s the ghost, something that haunts him endlessly. And maybe, he’s still the same broken man, covering his scars with balaclavas and white sheets instead of putting salve to them and attempting to heal, to move forward. 

He’s stuck in the exact same place. Everything else moves around him.  He wants to pick himself up off the floor and chase after her. He wants to grab her by the shoulders and beg. But that can’t be all he is now. He can’t be someone who pleads and asks questions he doesn’t actually want the answers to.

WARNINGS: drinking alcohol, throwing up, throat training, fingering, riding, PIV, needy (let me know if I need to add something.)

Tuesday:

It was a very cuddly evening.  Both of you were exhausted, Noah still not fully healed and still, seemingly, suffering with some after effects of the anaesthesia. 

You had burgers, eating quietly at the kitchen table.  Then you settled on the couch where Noah happily rested his head in your lap while you started a new show.  You played with his hair absent-mindedly while watching the show that played off in the Yosemite National Park.  Noah told you about his dream to have a cabin in the woods, just like the ones on the show, where he could just live in peace.

You liked the picture he was painting with his words and felt a sense of shame that you imagined yourself with him at the cabin.  And again, you wondered for a second where you fit into each other’s lives.  How long before this arrangement runs its course?

But then he got quiet again, and you felt how his breaths evened out and you knew he was sleeping, while you carried on watching the show.  He would stir whenever you stopped playing with his hair, so you kept that up as long as you could.

Eventually, you knew it was time for bed, especially if you had work the next day, so you woke Noah, and just led him to your bed, knowing he would not be in the mood to drive home. 

You left him a note to lock up when he leaves later when he woke, before you were off to work on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday:

You were at an End of Year function for work on Wednesday evening.  You did not give the event a lot of thought until you were at home getting dressed for it, and realised that you were nervous, or scared or something.  You did not feel like going at all. 

It was held at a restaurant where you and all of your colleagues were seated in forced situations, conversations were uncomfortable and the uneasy feeling in your belly just kept growing the longer you had to pretend to be interested.  So, you had a drink, and by the time you had finished the drink, the conversations were already just a little bit easier to handle.  Then you had another.

After three drinks, you were having a better time, laughing easily at stupid jokes and you even made a joke or two of your own.  You function went well after that, you had a few laughs, had conversations where you actually spoke more than a few words.

When everyone started leaving one by one, you were four drinks down.  Or was it five?  But this is when you realise the mistake you have made.  You were not sure what process in your head led you to believe that was a good idea, but now you had a problem.  You looked around and didn’t see anyone you knew well enough to ask for a lift home, and then you started laughing quietly to yourself. 

You were definitely not able to drive home yourself.  You were drunk and felt giggly, but you knew that.

This is why you don’t drink. 

There was only one person you wanted to speak to.  But you didn’t want to bother him, though.  But he did make you promise.  He insisted, in fact. 

Then you started looking for his name in your phone, and it was unnecessarily difficult.  But you find it, and you dial and you wait. 

‘Hi, baby,’ he answers his phone cheerily. 

‘Hello, Noah,’ you say, trying to sound normal.

‘Hmmm, are you alright?’ he asks immediately.

‘I am,’ you reply.  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘You sound different,’ he said simply.  ‘I hear noise in the background.  Where are you?’

‘I am at a work function, Noah.  I am at a restaurant,’ you say, and you know the words came out too slowly.

‘Oh,’ he pauses for a moment.  ‘Which restaurant?’

‘I don’t know,’ you say quickly.  ‘I can’t remember, Noah.’

‘And how is it going at the function?’ he asks sounding cautious.

‘It was good, I think.  I spoke to people, Noah,’ you answer.

‘Oh, that’s good.  But, baby, are you drunk?’ he asks.

‘How did you know?’

‘You keep saying my name,’ you hear him sounding a little amused.  ‘Do you need help?  Do you have a ride home?’

‘No, I am here with my car and I don’t think I should drive,’ you say slowly.

‘You are right,’ he says.  ‘Alright, don’t hang up.  And then I want you to send me your location.  Can you do that for me?’  he asks.

‘I can try,’ you reply.  ‘Give me a moment.’

‘I’ll wait.  It’s okay, take your time.’

You fiddle around and it takes you a lot longer than it would have if you were sober, but you manage to send it.  ‘Did you get it?’

‘I did,’ he confirms.  ‘Good job.  Now, are there people you can wait with, or are you alone?’

‘There are people from work, but I don’t know them well enough.  I don’t want to sit with them, Noah,’ you whine a little bit.

‘You don’t have to,’ he tries to calm you down.  ‘If you can, order some water.  Have you eaten something?’

‘We ate, yes,’ you answer.

‘Wait for me there.  Don’t go anywhere, alright?  I am on my way.’

‘Thank you, Noah,’ you say. 

You sit at the table a little bit longer and then you start feeling strange.  You felt awkward and alone, but you also felt like throwing up just a little.  You decide to go to the bathroom, just in case and then you lock yourself in a stall, close the toilet lid and sit down.  Then you lean sideways against the wall.  Your stomach was turning, but it just made you feel unwell.  Your brain is imagining a cabin in the woods where you can be at peace.

You hear your name being called after a long time and then you get up, unlatch the door and then Noah is standing there looking very unsure. 

‘Oh good,’ he lets out a long breath.  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he reaches out a hand and you take it. 

‘You found me,’ you say sounding very impressed.

He leads you out of the bathroom and into the main area.  ‘Do you have all your stuff?  Your keys?  Your phone?’ he asks, pausing while you slowly check yourself for the items.

You become aware that someone is nagging at Noah for going into the lady’s bathroom, but he is ignoring them completely, making sure you have what you need.

‘You’ll take my car?’ Noah asks someone else.

‘Yeah, I got it,’ it was Jesse he was talking to.  ‘You guys good?’

‘Yeah, I think so.  Just want to make sure she gets home now.  Thanks man,’ Noah says to Jesse who takes the keys of Noah’s car and leaves.

You finally manage to fish your own keys from your bag and you hold them up victoriously.  ‘I found them.’

‘That’s so good,’ he praises you, and then he is leading you towards the door, patiently walking slowly with you as you struggle to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other. 

He unlocks your car and helps you tumble into the passenger seat. 

He gets in on the driver’s side and adjusts the seat.  ‘Can you put on your seatbelt, please?’ he asks you as he is putting his own on and checking the mirrors. 

He watches you struggle with the belt for a moment, a fond smile on his face, before he gently takes it from your hands and clips it into place.  He starts the car and starts navigating through the parking lot.  ‘You look funny in my car,’ you say stifling a giggle.

‘Yeah?  Why?’ he asks.

‘You are too tall, my car is too small, your head is touching,’ you reach up to touch the top of his head, but you can’t reach with the seatbelt on.  You start undoing the seatbelt.

‘No, no, don’t do that,’ he takes your hand to stop you.  ‘The belt needs to stay on.’

‘Okay,’ you stop immediately. 

‘How did you know I needed you to fetch me?’ you ask him.

‘You called me, baby.  Don’t you remember?’ he asks, amused.

‘No,’ you say thinking very hard.  ‘I think I’m drunk.’

‘Mm, I think so too.  How many drinks did you have?’ he asks you, keeping his eyes on the road.

‘Too many,’ you say loudly.  ‘I don’t really drink, so I didn’t know this would happen.’

‘I’m sure you knew,’ he answers.

‘Yes, but it happened so quickly,’ you say leaning forward suddenly.  ‘I think I’m gonna throw up now.’

‘Ohhhh,’ he says, and he immediately slows down.  ‘Hold on, I’m pulling over.’

Somewhere next to the road, you open the door and then lean back to fight with the seatbelt, and you don’t make it far, you are still sitting in the car, just leaning outside when you throw up.  You lean further out.  And throw up again.  You managed to miss the car, but you made such a mess that you could not get out now without stepping in it.  You see Noah standing next to the car on your side.  ‘Please get back in the car,’ you plead.  ‘This is not going to be pretty.’

‘That’s okay,’ he says quietly. 

‘It’s going to get on your shoes,’ you mumble.

He sidesteps a little bit.  ‘Stop worrying about me.’

‘Oh no, please, Noah.  It’s coming again,’ you lean further out the door and vomit again.  You cough while your nose burns.  You hope your hair was hiding all the gory details. 

‘Here you go,’ he reaches a handful of tissues into your vision that you take gratefully.  You wipe and blow your nose as best you can.

You hang there a few moments longer, trying to feel if there was more to come or whether you had managed to projectile vomit it all out.  ‘I think I’m finished,’ you say, embarrassed, peaking up at Noah.

‘You sure?’ he asks.  ‘I have more tissues.’

‘I’ll take some more?  But I think I’m done puking,’ you say. 

‘I’m getting back in, but we will just sit here a moment longer.  Just to be sure,’ he says his voice reassuring.  He falls back into the driver’s seat.  ‘Here, drink some of this.’

He is holding out a bottle of water.  ‘Thank you.’

‘Small sips,’ he says.

You lean back in the seat, the door still open, in case you need it.  You didn’t feel like throwing up, but you felt sick and then also a little guilty.  You take tiny swallows of water at a time. 

He is sitting sideways in the seat, facing you, also leaning against the headrest.  He is looking at you with analysing eyes, probably trying to figure out what to do with your drunk ass.  The lights from passing cars play across his face and his perfect skin, his brown eyes a little sleepy, messy hair still somehow looking so good on him.   

‘You are so beautiful,’ you say before your brain could stop you. 

There was just enough time for you to see the small amused smile on his face before you hurl yourself halfway out the door to throw up again.  It wasn’t a lot.  Your stomach kept clenching like it was trying so hard to get rid of what was making you feel bad, but you don’t think there was anything left.  You heaved a little while longer.  Noah sympathetically rubbed your back. 

‘Dear god,’ you get back. 

‘There you go,’ he gives you more tissues, more water.  ‘I think you’re good now,’ he starts the car again.  ‘Tell me if you need me to stop, alright?’

‘I will,’ you say. 

Noah parks your car, and helps you inside, unlocking the door, carrying your stuff.  He makes you sit at the kitchen table, where you fold your arms and lay your head down. 

You actually must have fallen asleep, because he gently wakes you, makes you take aspirin, then gets you in the bathroom, already filled with steam, the shower water running.  He helps you undress.  When he notices that you were not going to do everything on your own, he joins you and helps you wash.  You notice his bandages were still on his stomach, and you touch them carefully.

He tucks you into bed.  Then he is on his phone, sitting on the edge of your bed.  ‘What are you doing?’

‘Just checking if Jesse can come pick me up,’ he says softly. 

‘Don’t leave?’ you whisper. 

He looks at you like he was trying to gauge whether you were serious.  ‘We both have work tomorrow.’

‘I know,’ you say.  ‘If I grossed you out, I get it though.’

‘You didn’t,’ he says like you were ridiculous.  ‘I’ve been drunk plenty.  I know how it goes.’

‘Wow, I cannot imagine you drunk,’ you say, wiggling yourself into pillow, getting comfortable.

‘I don’t drink anymore,’ he smiles.  ‘So, you missed out on that.’

‘So wise,’ you start to blink slowly.  ‘This is not a good feeling.’

‘Nope,’ he agrees.  He leans down to kiss your forehead.  Then he slips his shirt off, which he had just put on after the shower and he gets in bed behind you.  ‘We are going to have to get up early, and you are going to have to drop me off before work.  And you are going to hate me and the whole world tomorrow.  So, get some sleep.’

‘Oh no,’ you reach for his hand.  ‘But I won’t hate you.’

‘We’ll see,’ he says as he settles in, tucked into you. 

Friday:

Noah had made himself comfortable sitting on your bed, leaning back against the pillows, stunningly naked, with a slight grin on his face.  The light from the candles played beautifully across his tattooed skin and his eyes were dark, looking at you with a mixture of attraction and reassurance. 

You were kneeling on the bed between his spread legs, with your goal for the evening in mind. 

‘Are you sure you are feeling all better after Wednesday?’ he asks you.

‘Yes, I just felt bad yesterday, I’m all good now,’ you affirm again.

‘If you are sure,’ he smiles.  ‘You remember the rules, right?’

‘I do,’ you answer while placing your hands on his thighs.   

‘You need to take it easy on me, I’m not healed enough for too much,’ he says with a teasing lilt to his voice.

‘I know,’ you smile back.  ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’

‘I think you’re going to drive me crazy, and I am not going to be able to help myself,’ he answers simply.

‘I’ll make sure you don’t do that,’ you say smiling but also being serious. 

‘Thank you, because I cannot wait longer to have you.  I am dying to feel you,’ he says.

‘Me too,’ you say shyly.  ‘But we are taking it easy, okay?’

He takes a deep breath.  ‘I am ready.’

‘So, now you have to tell me if you need me to stop,’ you say leaning in, your hands pressing on his thighs as you kiss him.  Noah opens his mouth to you immediately and kisses you, and he already keeps his hands still at his sides.  You kiss the tip of his nose before you sit back and adjust yourself.

‘I never need you to stop,’ he says.

You give him a warning look.  ‘It would be great if don’t tear something open,’ you give a brief look at his stomach where the bandages were still in place.  ‘Just try to keep still.’

‘I’ll try, baby, I promise,’ he says seeming tense.

Then you get comfortable and start teasing him lightly, starting slow.  His body reacts to you quickly.  He was already half-erect when you touched him, running your fingers along the top, teasing the tip with a single finger.  It didn’t take long at all before he was fully hard, flexing with each touch and the glistening drop of precum forming, soon dripped down onto his lower belly. 

He was breathing fast and you heard every breath, his chest moving along, but his eyes stayed glued to your actions.  You wrapped your hand around his length and pumped a few times, using his precum to ease the movements.  You got lost in watching how your hand looked around him, how very soft his skin felt, how the veins bulged out.  You took in his size, where your fingers were just able to close around his girth. 

‘Are you doing okay?’ you ask him.

‘What you are doing feels so good, baby.  I’m not going to last long at all,’ he says almost apologetically. 

‘That’s fine,’ you try to put him at ease.  ‘Are you sensitive?’

‘Yes,’ he nods. 

‘I have all night.  We can keep going until you’ve had as many orgasms as you want,’ you say.

‘Fuck,’ he lets out softly on shaky breath. 

You move your hand on him again, and he drops his head back for a moment, before he forces himself to look right back at you.  You get closer and lick up the thin trail of precum.  He moans and grunts when you kiss the tip, kiss your way down his length and then back up.  You take his head into your mouth and work your tongue in the slit just like he likes, sucking lightly. 

‘I’m ready to try,’ you say when you had worked up the courage. 

He nods at you breathlessly.  ‘You remember what we discussed?’

‘I do,’ you say. 

You take his head back in your mouth and then you start working your way down, taking him deeper.  You kept pushing past where it felt comfortable, until he slipped into your throat.  You gagged immediately and pulled back quickly.  ‘Good girl, that was so good.  Give it a moment, when you’re ready, you do that again.’

You breathe for a moment, letting the feeling pass, before you try your best to take him as deep as possible, but just for a second.  You gag and pull back.  You repeat this a few times and each time, Noah praises you, barely able to contain his body’s need to thrust up into your mouth.  You knew it was something that would get easier with practice, just knowing what to expect already made it a little easier each time.

‘I think it’s time you cum,’ you say wrapping your hand around his cock, wet from your mouth. 

He looks at you pleadingly.  ‘Can you do that while you are kissing me?’ he asks you.

So, you straddle his thighs, so you could pump him, and then also have him hold your face as he kisses you slowly and deliberately, each movement of his tongue a message.  You wished you knew what he was trying to say.

‘I’m going to cum,’ he whispers into your mouth.  ‘Baby, oh, I’m going to cum, please don’t stop.’

‘I won’t stop,’ you whisper back.  When he squeezes his eyes shut and his mouth opens, still against yours, you feel him in your hand and you slowed your movements just a little bit, hoping it would make him not move too much.  ‘There you go, breathe through it.’

‘I didn’t cum in you,’ is the first thing he says. 

‘Does that bother you?’ you ask, remembering how he said it felt like a waste. 

‘Just a little bit,’ he shrugs.  ‘It felt so good.  Thank you.’

You bring your hand to your mouth where some of his cum was on your fingers and you lick it off.  ‘I liked that too, I’ve never made you cum with my hand before.’

Noah watches you with rapt attention as you swallow his cum anyway.  ‘I,’ he says and then he stops, like he completely lost his track of thought. 

You smile at him.

‘That makes me want to fuck you so bad,’ he says. 

‘I’m sure we can make a plan, but you need a moment,’ you explain.

‘How’s your pussy, baby?’ he asks you.

‘Fine,’ you say dismissively. 

‘Can you show me, please?’ he asks.

You lift up onto your knees, and then he leans forward just a little so he could get his fingers on you.  His eyes shut for a second as you feel his fingers find you dripping wet.  Two fingers work their way up and down your slit a few times. 

‘You must be so needy, baby,’ he frowns.  ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to wait so long.’

With your hips already rocking a little on his fingers, you say, ‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Can I put my fingers inside?’

You simply nod and then he sinks those same fingers into you and he works them as deep as he could get them. 

‘Can you help me?  Can you play with your clit?’ he says as he is already curling his fingers inside you, his movements slow but firm.

Your hand goes down to touch yourself, and your other hand rests on his arm.  ‘Mm I’ve missed that.’

‘Me too,’ he says.  ‘So much, I want to ravage you, right now.’

‘Well, you can’t,’ you say playfully.  ‘You have to take it slow.’  You roll your hips.  ‘Slow and easy.’

‘Look at you enjoying teasing me,’ he laughs softly. 

‘I’m just trying to make myself feel better, because I really, really wish you could fuck me until I cannot walk,’ you say simply.

‘Jesus fucking Christ, Peach,’ he says in a low voice.  His movements inside you go a little faster and it feels so good.

You circle your clit with more urgency and the grip on his arm digs into his skin.  ‘Be careful, Noah,’ you practically moan out.

‘I’m fine,’ he answers, staying right there where it feels almost too intense.  ‘Rub yourself faster, baby.’

The tingles start right where his fingers are, where your fingers are, and then travels up your spine and through your whole body.  He pulls you closer until he could rest his forehead against your chest.  When you have your breath back and your thighs have stopped shaking, you ask him, ‘Are you hard again?’

‘I am,’ he affirms, sounding like the situation is almost painful for him.

‘Good,’ you say and you move back off his thighs.  ‘Let me sit where I was, please?’

‘Oh god,’ he says almost apprehensively.

‘Should we stop?’ you ask.

‘No, that’s not what I mean at all,’ he says, quick to correct your assumptions.  ‘You are going to try keeping me in your throat a little longer now?’

‘Yeah,’ you confirm.  ‘That’s how we discussed it?’

‘Yeah, I know,’ he smiles.  ‘But I don’t know if I am going to be able to keep still through that.’

‘Well, you have to,’ you say.  ‘Or we need to try this next time.’

He looks at you with soft eyes and a small smile.  His brown eyes are so pretty.  ‘Can we try?  If I cannot control myself, we will stop.’

‘Sure,’ you agree.  ‘You ready?’

‘Yip,’ he says, visibly trying to relax his body.  ‘Spit on it, baby.’

You look up him.  Then you make your best attempt at getting his cock wet with your spit, without it being all gross and messy.  He didn’t seem to mind either way because he was gripping onto the blankets underneath him already, trying to breath himself into a state of calm.

Your throat already felt sore and almost bruised, so you knew you had to be gentle.  You take him into your mouth, feeling the weight of him on your tongue, a feeling you are growing to love.  When you force your head down further than what you think you can, you try to be careful.  When you gag around him, his hips stutter just the tiniest bit and you hear him repeat ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ so softly.  You stay there despite your body’s instinct to pull back as quickly as possible.  You count four seconds before you started to pull back. 

You breathe, cough, wipe your face.  Noah sounds like he is praying.

Without warning, you try again.  This time your hands on his hips, a reminder that he needs to try and keep as still as possible.  He slips into your throat, you keep it there despite the discomfort and try five seconds.    

‘One more time?’ you ask him, concerned because he seemed to be having hard time.

‘Alright,’ he says.  ‘Your throat feels really good.’

‘I can stop, it’s okay,’ you try to stop the look of agony of his face.

He opens his eyes.  ‘You could literally do anything you want to me right now,’ he admits. 

You cannot help but smile widely at him.  ‘You are adorable right now.’

‘So, come kiss me first?’ he reaches for you. 

You wrap your arms around his neck when you are close enough to kiss him and his arms are tight around your waist, where he pulls your body as close to his as he could.

You feel him against your thigh.  ‘Can you fuck me just like this?’ you ask softly.

He makes eye contact with you while he positions himself right at your entrance.  When you start to lower yourself on him, your eyes close.  ‘Look at me,’ he whispers.  You force your eyes open and look into his.  ‘There you go,’ he says so sweetly when he is fully buried inside you. 

‘Where you belong,’ you whisper back. 

You kiss while you adjust to him again.  The stretch of him inside you, the feeling of being full and being whole.  Your bodies close.  ‘This is the best feeling in the world,’ he says right into your ear. 

You couldn’t agree more.  You felt such waves of emotions and you knew he was feeling something similar – the way he clung to you. 

‘I love feeling your nipples on my chest, your breath in my neck, your grip around my cock,’ he says his voice almost cracking with need.  He inhales like there is more he wants to say, but you almost hear the words die in his throat. 

You very gently rock your hips, just small movements.  But more than the sensations of your movements, he was right – your whole body felt him, and craved him and every place your bodies touched was sacred and important.

‘I love this too,’ you finally reply.  ‘This is when I feel the safest.

Chapter 18